Your employees are a diverse group of individuals with unique financial and retirement needs. Hewitt's Self-Directed Brokerage Windows empower your employees to take greater control over their investment decisions.

Click here to view a brief video about our Self-Directed Brokerage Window online tool.

While the set of funds in your 401(k) plan is designed to accommodate most of their retirement goals, employees have varying personal and family circumstances that require access to a broader range of investments. But it can be a challenge to open up the investment options to accommodate a small number of employees without creating greater confusion for the majority. A Self-Directed Brokerage Account (SDBA) from Hewitt Financial Services provides a simple solution. 

Through a Self-Directed Brokerage Account, employees gain access to nearly 300 mutual fund families with more than 3,000 mutual funds available with no loads, waived loads, or no transaction fees. Employers may also choose to include access to more than 10,000 publicly traded stocks, exchange-traded funds, bonds, CDs, and more.  

Through Hewitt's award-winning Web site, employees can:

• Learn about thousands of investments using analysis from top research sources such as Lipper, S&P, Zacks, and Briefing.com
• Check account balances and holdings, place trades, and monitor the markets, 24 hours a day, seven days a week
• Create customized model portfolios to track the movement of stocks and mutual funds 

Employees have access via phone to a team of licensed investment specialists available from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Eastern time, Monday through Friday.

You can be assured that a Hewitt Self-Directed Brokerage Account has been designed to offer the flexibility necessary to meet your participants' needs and your ERISA fiduciary responsibilities (e.g., by preventing access to your company stock or investments on margin). In addition, periodic reports are available to employees to monitor the investments held. 

To learn more about adding the Self-Directed Brokerage Account option and how your company can benefit, contact your local Hewitt consultant or e-mail peoplesolutions@hewitt.com.