Fixing Retirement-Plan Servicing

Fixing Retirement-Plan Servicing

A participant calls to ask about a loan from their 401(k). The agent opens three PDFs, scrolls through pages of legal text, and looks for the clause that limits loan amounts. While the participant waits, the agent toggles between an adoption agreement, a Summary Plan Description, and a separate procedure guide.The call takes ten minutes. The answer is correct, but no record shows which section was used.

Multiply that by hundreds of plans and thousands of daily calls. Each extra minute becomes wasted cost, and each undocumented answer becomes an audit risk.

The Real Cause

The documents themselves are the constraint. They were drafted for compliance reporting, not for service. Each employer edits its own versions, so clauses appear in different formats and on different pages. Key details hide in cross-references and footnotes.

Agents spend most of their time searching, not advising. Even with training, the process depends on recall and guesswork rather than verified retrieval. That structure guarantees inconsistency and drives cost.

How the Work Should Run

Retrieval-based automation turns the search into a controlled workflow.The system ingests adoption agreements, SPDs, and procedures. It breaks them into defined sections, indexes them, and retrieves the clause that matches the question. It produces a draft with citations.

The customer service representative checks the draft, confirms it against plan rules, and gives the participant the verified answer. The system logs the full exchange for audit.

The agent still owns the judgment and the communication; the system removes the scavenger hunt.

Example in Practice

A participant asks whether they can take a hardship withdrawal.

Manual process: the agent searches two documents, checks a third for exceptions, and confirms with compliance. The call runs fifteen minutes.

Retrieval workflow: the system locates the hardship clause, lists the qualifying events, and generates a cited draft. The agent verifies the language and explains it to the participant. The call closes in five minutes with a full record of sources used.

That difference repeats across every plan and every question.

The Measurable Effects

• Time: Calls shorten by several minutes, which scales to thousands of hours saved each year for large record keepers.

• Accuracy: Every answer cites its source, reducing interpretation errors.

• Compliance: Each response leaves a complete audit trail.

• Cost: Lower handle time and rework cut service expense without reducing staff.

Record keepers, third-party administrators, and large plan sponsors see the largest return because they handle the highest volume of plan-specific questions.

The Broader Point

Retirement-plan servicing has relied on human recall to interpret complex documents. The next stage is service intelligence—where retrieval, citation, and review replace memory as the basis for accuracy.This shift does not automate judgment; it standardizes how evidence is found. The result is not only faster service but stronger fiduciary control.

Call to Action

If your service teams still search through adoption agreements or SPDs during calls, schedule a session with Doculabs and Vertesia. We will use your plan documents to show the workflow in real time: how the system retrieves clauses, cites them, and records each exchange for audit.You will see the process as it operates inside a live service environment, using your material and your rules.