Employer Plan Services
Retirement Plans Built for Medicine. Not Corporate America
Your retirement plan should help you build personal wealth, manage your practice's tax burden, and offer meaningful benefits to the people who keep your practice running.
Cognis Group helps healthcare practice owners pursue greater tax-efficient retirement savings, reduce compliance risk, and build benefits that support staff retention. We bring plan design, investment oversight, and participant education together around your practice's goals.
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Explore our employer plan presentation.
Click through the slides to see how we approach plan design, compliance, investments and participant engagement for healthcare practices.
EMPLOYER PLAN SERVICES
Optimized Retirement Solutionsfor Healthcare Practices
A retirement plan designed around the realities of medicine.
Tax-efficient savings, compliance support and meaningful staff benefits
Cognis Twin-Shield Framework™
Unshackle your medical practice from outdated retirement plans.
Traditional retirement plans fail modern medical practices. High-earning partners face restrictive contribution ceilings and aggressive tax drag, while administrative overhead burdens your operations team. At the same time, a cookie-cutter investment menu does nothing to help you recruit and retain top clinical talent in a competitive market.
The Cognis Twin-Shield Framework solves this structural mismatch. By fusing a modern algorithmic recordkeeping platform with institutional wealth management and custody, Cognis Twin-Shield splits your corporate retirement plan into two synchronized, high-performance tracks. This modern architecture shields your highest earners from excessive tax liabilities while deploying automated, hyper-personalized asset allocations for your entire clinical and administrative staff.
Engineered to protect and personalize: key features
Dual-Track Plan Architecture
Seamlessly bifurcates your plan into an elite executive track focused on maximum wealth accumulation and a fully automated staff track.
Modern Recordkeeping Engine
Eliminates administrative drag with automated compliance testing, instant onboarding, and real-time contribution tracking.
Institutional Custody
Unlocks elite, low-cost asset classes, institutional-grade model portfolios, seamless advisor-managed account structures, and access to alternative investments.
Hyper-Personalized Staff Allocations
Replaces generic target-date funds with individual glide paths tailored to each employee's unique career stage and risk profile NOT simply age.
Advanced ERISA 3(38) Fiduciary Protection
Transfers investment liability entirely away from your medical practice partners to our specialized advisory team.
Side by side
A new era of retirement architecture.
| Plan dimension | Traditional medical practice plans | The Cognis Twin-Shield Framework |
|---|---|---|
| High-Earner Limits | Capped by rigid compliance constraints and standard safe harbor designs. | Maximized via integrated cash balance matching and voluntary advisor-managed accounts. |
| Investment Strategy | Rigid, expensive, and manual target-date mutual funds. | Hyper-personalized, institutional-grade portfolios tracking individual risk profiles. |
| Administrative Burden | Manual end-of-year testing, high data friction, and heavy paperwork. | Automated payroll integration and real-time compliance tracking via 401GO. |
| Fiduciary Liability | Practice partners absorb significant operational and regulatory risks. | Comprehensive mitigation through direct ERISA 3(38) fiduciary delegation. |
Every stakeholder
Uncompromising benefits for every stakeholder.
For Medical Partners and Senior Specialists
- Maximize Tax Shelters. Shield your peak-earning income from aggressive tax brackets by clearing institutional pathways to higher contribution limits.
- True Institutional Diversification. Move beyond basic public equities into private markets, using structured Rule 506(c) verification to seamlessly build out your alternative asset allocations.
For Practice Administrators and HR Executives
- Zero-Friction Operations. Save dozens of hours every month through automated payroll syncing and instantaneous employee onboarding.
- A Powerful Recruiting Magnet. Attract top-tier MDs, Nurse Practitioners, and clinical specialists with a highly differentiated, elite benefits package.
For Nursing, Clinical, and Support Staff
- Automated Personalized Wealth Planning. Give every team member an individualized retirement glide path designed around their specific financial timeline.
- Lower Structural Costs. Keep more money invested and compounding by eliminating the high, hidden fee layers of legacy insurance provider plans.
Transform your practice retirement plan today.
Do not let an outdated plan design compromise your partners' wealth or your practice's ability to hire the best talent. Secure your practice assets, eliminate administrative friction, and provide a truly modern benefit to your entire organization.
Contact Cognis Group team today to request a custom plan design blueprint for your medical practice.
Request a custom plan design blueprintThe unique medical practice dilemma
A medical practice brings together people with very different financial circumstances.
Physician owners, employed clinicians, nurses, technicians, and administrative staff all come to work with different priorities. Owners may want to accelerate retirement savings after years of training, while employees may be balancing everyday expenses with saving for the future.
Differences in compensation, age, ownership, and participation can make a standard retirement plan less effective than expected. The challenge is to balance three priorities:
- Meaningful retirement savings for physicians and owners.
- Valuable, affordable benefits for your staff.
- A plan your practice can fund and administer consistently.
We help you evaluate those priorities together.
Plan design that fits your practice
Make your retirement plan part of your wealth strategy.
Choosing a retirement plan starts with understanding your ownership structure, employee demographics, cash flow, and long-term goals.
We help evaluate traditional and safe harbor 401(k) designs, employer matching contributions, and profit-sharing arrangements. For suitable practices, we also explore whether adding a cash balance pension plan could expand retirement savings opportunities.
Each design is assessed against its potential tax benefits, staff contribution costs, administrative requirements, and funding commitments. We coordinate with your tax advisor and plan administration professionals so that the strategy fits your broader financial picture.
The goal
A plan that supports your owners without overlooking your team or your operating budget.
Address HCE testing before it becomes a year-end surprise
Greater clarity for high-earning physicians.
In a traditional 401(k), low participation among other employees can limit how much highly compensated employees, often including physician owners, can contribute. Failed nondiscrimination testing may require corrective distributions or additional employer contributions.
We work with your plan administrator to evaluate testing exposure and compare practical solutions, including safe harbor designs where appropriate. A qualifying safe harbor arrangement can satisfy certain nondiscrimination testing requirements, although other compliance obligations remain.
We also help coordinate reviews of employee eligibility, compensation definitions, ownership information, and applicable coverage and top-heavy requirements.
The goal
Fewer avoidable surprises and a clearer understanding of what your plan requires.
An investment lineup with a clear purpose
Thoughtful choices. Ongoing oversight.
A retirement plan should offer investment choices employees can understand and use confidently. We help develop and monitor a diversified investment lineup, assessing investment strategy, risk, performance, and fees. Where appropriate, the lineup may include target-date funds or other professionally managed options for participants who prefer a simpler approach.
Our investment oversight supports a documented review process and helps practice owners understand the decisions being made on behalf of the plan.
The goal
Accessible investment choices supported by a disciplined fiduciary process.
Investment fiduciary relationship
Choose the right investment fiduciary relationship
Advice with sponsor control
Cognis provides investment recommendations and monitoring within the agreed scope. Your designated plan fiduciaries retain authority over investment selections and changes.
Delegated investment management
When formally appointed under a written agreement, Cognis exercises discretion to select, monitor and replace the plan investments covered by the appointment.
Benefits your staff understands—and uses
Turn a retirement benefit into a meaningful part of your workplace.
A retirement plan delivers more value when employees understand how it works. We support participant engagement through clear enrollment guidance, education about employer contributions, and practical discussions of saving and investing. Topics can include contribution choices, investment basics, and retirement readiness.
For busy clinical teams, communication should be straightforward and easy to access. We also help evaluate enrollment features and ongoing education that can encourage participation, subject to your plan's design and applicable requirements.
The goal
Help employees recognize the value of their benefits and take informed steps toward retirement.
Where available under the plan, a managed account approach can use more than a participant's age to inform portfolio recommendations or management. Relevant information may include salary, contribution rate, accumulated savings, projected Social Security benefits, retirement goals and outside or spousal assets when supplied and supported.
- An all-digital experience that easily manages enrollment events and engages with employees to encourage greater participation.
- Individual success metrics that puts critical information at participant's fingertips.
- Actionable & timely personalized information/updates to each plan participant.
Employees can update supported profile information as circumstances change. The aim is a retirement strategy informed by a more complete picture of the individual.
Personalization depends on the information available and plan configuration; it does not guarantee investment results.
Coordinated support for busy practice owners
Spend more time with patients and less time chasing plan details.
Managing a retirement plan involves your practice, payroll provider, recordkeeper, third-party administrator, and investment advisor. Cognis Group helps coordinate these relationships, clarify responsibilities, and support ongoing plan reviews.
Whether you are establishing a new plan or evaluating an existing one, we help connect the financial strategy with the people and processes needed to carry it out.
The goal
A coordinated experience for your practice and your employees.
Start with a review of your current plan
Your practice evolves. Your retirement plan should be reviewed as ownership, staffing, compensation, and business goals change.
Plan design
Does the structure support your owners' and employees' goals?
Contribution opportunities
Are you making effective use of available retirement savings options?
Testing and administration
Where might avoidable issues arise?
Investments and fees
Are the choices and costs appropriate for your plan?
Employee engagement
Do participants understand and use their benefits?
Frequently asked questions
Answers to common questions about employer plan services.
Final call to action
Build a retirement plan that works as hard as your practice does.
Whether you are launching your first plan or improving an established one, Cognis Group can help you evaluate a retirement strategy built around your healthcare practice.
Schedule a Practice Retirement Plan Review