Retirement Plan Audit Strategies
New Form 5500 and 403(b) Regulations: Revising Your Audit Roadmap
Recording of a 110-minute CPE webinar with Q&A
This seminar will offer alternatives and best practices to improve audit planning for examinations of the new Form 5500 and under the revised 403(b) regulations.
Outline
- New aspects of Form 5500 that auditors will look for
- Form 5500 itself: Plan name, signatures, headcount, plan features highlighted
- Schedule A: Insurance companies named, are plan investments pooled separate accounts, do PSA totals match financial statements
- Schedule H: Compare net assets available for benefits against financials, compare contract and fair values, question on employee deferrals and loan repayments
- New aspects of 403(b) plans that auditors will look for
- New plan document requirements
- Universal availability rules and audits
- New transfer and exchange rules
- Preparing for a Form 5500 audit
- Selecting qualified auditor
- Obtaining engagement letter
- Pre-audit meetings
- Audit conduct
- Preparing for a 403(b) plan audit
- Maintaining plan documentation and participant records
- Historical account of plan custodians
- Reconciling what are and aren’t plan assets
- Acquiring asset information for plan year
Benefits
The panel will review these and other key questions:
- The new Form 5500: Determining which aspects of the new Schedules C, SB, MB and others are most likely to draw auditors' close attention.
- The updated 403(b) regs: Finding the potential red flags in the new plan documents, different non-discrimination and asset-transfer rules, and employee exclusion rules.
- Audit planning strategies: Creating a plan to anticipate and prepare for each area where auditors are likely to inspect a plan for compliance issues.
Faculty

Diane Wasser
Partner-In-Charge, Pension Services Group
Amper Politziner & Mattia
She has more than 20 years of public accounting experience, working with employee benefit and welfare benefit plan... | Read More
She has more than 20 years of public accounting experience, working with employee benefit and welfare benefit plan audits and consulting. She has firmwide responsibility for ERISA employee benefits engagement quality and serves on the AICPA 403(b) Task Force.
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Justin Amico
Partner, Pension Audit Group
Feeley & Driscoll
He has more than 15 years of public accounting experience, with particular concentrations on ERISA matters and the... | Read More
He has more than 15 years of public accounting experience, with particular concentrations on ERISA matters and the construction industry. His client work covers pension audit, accounting, tax, MIS consulting and financial and operational analysis.
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Stacy Meyer
Manager, Benefit Services Group
LarsonAllen
Her background includes audits of single- and multi-employer employee benefit plans, including defined benefit and... | Read More
Her background includes audits of single- and multi-employer employee benefit plans, including defined benefit and defined contribution pension plans, health and welfare plans and other tax-exempt organizations.
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Aimee Hollenhorst
Senior Manager
Rubino & McGeehin
She specializes in employee benefit plan audits, and general attest and accounting services for the non-profit and... | Read More
She specializes in employee benefit plan audits, and general attest and accounting services for the non-profit and government contracting sectors. She has more than 17 years of public accounting experience.
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