DIETRICH & ASSOCIATES, INC.
OSPREY, FLORIDA

The team at Dietrich is well versed in the institutional annuity marketplace. With more than 250 years of combined experience in our industry, our actuarial and underwriting specialists offer a full range of consulting services to meet the needs of each client situation. Our comprehensive annuity provider market searches, extensive knowledge of provider capabilities and competitive bid processes produce measurable results and assure clients that they will obtain the most competitive institutional annuity pricing available in the market today. Our established relationships with virtually every annuity provider in the marketplace uniquely position us to be able to design plan specific, competitively priced insured solutions. As qualified independent experts, we compile and maintain insurance company financial due diligence credit research and proprietary ratings reports to support plan sponsor compliance of their fiduciary requirements. The Pennsylvania Company for the Granting of Annuities was founded. Andrew Carnegie established the Teacher’s Pension Fund eventually becoming the Teacher’s Insurance and Annuity Association (TIAA) in 1918 to provide annuities to educators. Over 300 private pension plans exist, covering approximately 15 percent of the nation’s wage and salary employees. The growth of pension coverage is attributed to employers’ desire to attract workers, reduce labor turnover, and more [humanely] remove older, less productive employees. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) is enacted. The Act requires participant disclosures, establishes vesting schedules, sets minimum funding rules, limits annual contributions and annual pension benefits, and requires that a joint and survivor annuity be provided to an employee who retires at The Department of Labor issues interpretive bulletin 95-1 requiring pension plan sponsors to use only “safest available annuity providers” when using annuities to fund pension obligations and to utilize “independent experts” to analyze insurance companies to comply with their fiduciary obligations. Dietrich has provided more than 1,000 pension plans with group annuity contracts guaranteeing benefits of more than $2 billion dollars (present value) for more than 100,000 participants and the largest “independent expert” provider of annuity contracts for pension plans nationally. Firm News At the core of our business is our philanthropic efforts and relationships with local and national non-profit organizations. Our commitment to individuals and communities in need starts with our employees. In addition to contributing funds or volunteer time to charities our employees are personally involved with, we also offer a holiday match program in which we match donations made to a charitable cause of our employees’ choice each holiday season. We embrace the season of giving by kicking off Giving Tuesday with organizing a food drive to stock a local food bank in our community, the Mattie N. Dixon Community Cupboard. Cookies 4 Kids’ Cancer is another one of our favorite non-profits to work with during the holiday season. We send their delicious cookies to our clients during the holidays every year. We are currently working closely with Cookies 4 Kids’ Cancer to find ways to support their inspiring organization year-round. The Special Olympics and Make A Wish Foundations are national charities which we support in an on-going basis to help raise funds and promote their Philadelphia area programs. We also sit on the advisory board of and solicit donations from our various insurance company partners to help fund Cradle of Hope, a home for single mothers and children which offers housing and support services in the Philadelphia area. “I take pleasure in taking this opportunity to acknowledge Dietrich & Associates for the superior service they provide to our company. In November 2006, the Pennock Company’s Excecutive Committee contracted this company to provide us assistance with our Pension Plan Termination Process. Dietrich advised us of the termination procedures, marketed… Thank you very much for your assistance in securing annuities for our retirees who opted not to take the lump-sum option. This is an area in which we at IPS have little or no experience. The professional guidance provided was a great relief to Integrated Power Services. I took comfort… A New England based private college engaged Dietrich to consult with the pension plan fiduciaries over a period of several years for services which included monitoring of the cost to transfer the pension plan obligations by providing multiple annuity pricing indications for pension committee meetings, performing town hall meetings with professors and staff and managing the pension annuity placement and annuity bid process end to end. During the preliminary and final bid processes insurance company annuity quotes varied by more than 10%. Dietrich negotiated an additional 4% reduction off the lowest bid saving the plan an additional $800,000 in cost. A Philadelphia based wholesale florist with an extremely underfunded pension plan was paying high variable PBGC premiums and was required to fund their pension shortfall over 7 years which was causing a severe cash flow drain, ultimately jeopardizing the enterprise’s ability to remain in business. Dietrich provided advice to the employer and their lender on how the company could borrow the funds against unencumbered employer real estate assets to fund up and terminate the pension plan while reducing the annual cash flow expense to the employer by 50 % and providing a predictable fixed amortization expense allowing the company to remain financially viable to this day. A New England based Insurance Company was interested in finding a way to reduce the high accounting expense under FASB and cap their continually growing cost of their retiree medical plan. Using a VEBA, a fully insured health insurance policy and a specially designed group annuity contact to fund the employer subsidy, Dietrich’s solution eliminated the FASB accounting charge and capped the employer subsidy expense while providing the employer with an immediate tax deduction for the annuity cost for more than 1000 retirees. The plan, implemented more than 10 years ago continues in existence today and is administered by Dietrich’s group benefits administrative support unit.