Our number one priority is protecting the tax advantaged status of your retirement plan. The best way to provide you customer service is to remain abreast of IRS regulations that surround the largely undiscovered world of self-directed IRAs. We’ve previously stated that we do not give advice or review your investments for legitimacy—so what do we mean by protecting your plan?
A little more paperwork – It’s important to keep the self-directed nature of your IRA intact, and part of that is good recordkeeping. Because we are an unbiased third party administrator, we cannot direct your investments or make any decisions on behalf of your IRA. What this means is that we need your written authorization to do virtually anything investment related – depending on the scenario this may mean a form will need to be completed, or we’ll need confirmation via fax, email, or signed note.
Customer Service = Accuracy – We’re checking to make sure you have all of the necessary documents completed fully and correctly, we’re looking to see if you have cleared funds, and we’re reviewing your third party documents (such as your contracts and agreements) to make sure the IRA is vested correctly. We also look to verify that there are no obvious prohibited transactions and that you’ve marked these documents read and approved for signature. A misstep in certain documentation might create taxable consequences for you, which is why we have a 2-5 business day review time for documentation and a 1 business day response time to voicemails and emails.
We’re not just trying to be difficult – The more information you give us, the better. When we don’t have the full scope of a situation, we may hold a transaction to get a better feel for your bottom line. The last thing our office wants is to distribute your account for a prohibited transaction – this can result in losing the tax advantaged status of your entire IRA plus excise penalties and early withdrawal penalties. Despite the questions we may ask, it is up to you to provide us with all the information surrounding your IRA’s investments.
Our employees are cross-trained – Due to the fact that our firm is not a very large company, rather than assign you your very own account representative we give you our company as a whole. Though we do our very best to keep you in contact with the same representative throughout your transaction, we better service you by cross-training our employees so that virtually anyone in the office can answer your questions. If, for whatever reason, your first contact is unable to answer a question, he or she will either find the answer for you, or pass you on to someone more knowledgeable.
We understand that sometimes transactions are inherently time-sensitive and we do our best to accommodate such requests. Despite this, our interest lies in serving you and your self-directed IRA the best way we can; we value accuracy and education to ensure your self-directed IRA keeps its tax-advantaged status. Whereas we can’t guarantee your investment, we can guarantee that we are doing the best we can as an unbiased third party administrator in accordance with our focus on IRS regulations and customer education.
We hope that these tips can help you have a better understanding of the inner cogs and workings at Next Generation Services and we look forward to your next transaction!
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