Addendum_#1_-_HRA_RFP_Q&A.pdf

Addendum #1 to RFP No. 017-202406-MC Questions and Answers

Question # Question / Response

1. What is the County's reason for marketing? If it is due to an upcoming contract term date, have all renewals been leveraged?

The current contract expires on 3/31/25 and per the County’s procurement policies, we are required to rebid the services.

2. Is Mission Square the group's 401k provider today?

No.

3. Is the 401k business out to market?

4. Has the County ever transitioned their HRA/115 plan in the past? If so, how was the experience for the County and the plan participants?

MissionSquare, formerly ICMA-RC, has been the County’s sole HRA recordkeeper since the plan was formed in 2009.

5. Is 7/1 the plan year renewal or would this be considered off-cycle?

The plan year is Jan 1 to Dec 31. We would like the new contract to be effective July 1 to align with the County’s fiscal year.

6. What has gone particularly well with the County's current experience around the HRA/115 plan?

Last year, we were able to successfully transition/enroll over 13,000 employees to the HRA plan.

7. What are two to three areas for enhancement from the County's current HRA/115 plan experience?

In no particular order:

1. Processing of participant demographic information.

2. Flexibility to add new data fields in the future, such as emails and Employee ID numbers.

3. Improved reporting capabilities.

4. Customization of participant websites and communications.

5. UAT environment to test new programing before it goes live in Production.

8. Is the HRA administration + investment component both managed by the incumbent today?

Yes.

9. Please clarify if the .19% fee assessed on all assets is the only associated fee with the plan.

Does the County of a renewal fee, etc? Do participants face other related fess alongside the 0.19%?

Correct. All fees for the plan are borne by the participants. This is the only fee charged by the current vendor. The current recordkeeping fee is an asset-based fee of 0.19%. Decreased from the initial 0.195% fee at the beginning of the contract term, based on the one-time

Question # Question / Response deposit of just over $62M in rollover funds in 2023 with the transition of more than 13,000 employees to the HRA plan.

10. Is the requested $90,000 annual reimbursement a component of the County's existing structure, or is this just a desired-state request?

The current administrative funding allocation is $80,000 annually.

11. It states the $90,000 requested reimbursement may increase year to year. Does the County have historical data on how this has increased in the past, and/or does the County have the ability to forecast the increase percentage moving forward?

The actual amount is subject to negotiation with the awarded vendor; however, see below for the historical annual amounts:

$80,000 – 2019-25 $70,000 – 2014-18

12. The RFP states the County is looking for a dedicated service team. "Dedicated" in the industry often means a team solely aligned to one client who are not able to serve other clients with the administrator. Please confirm if the County is seeking a dedicated service team, or if a designated service team is acceptable (one who serves the County and other clients).

The County’s preference would be a dedicated service team but offering a designated service team may be acceptable. This is not a disqualifying factor but will be taken into consideration during the overall evaluation of proposals.

13. What is the service experience for the client today? What roles do they have serving them, how often do they meet, etc?

The current vendor offers a designated service team composed of one client relationship manager, one account director, one retirement plan account manager, and two retirement plan specialists/educators. Please refer to pages 7-8 of the RFP for interactions.

14. Are there divisional needs in regard to invoicing/billing, reporting, HR team member access, and claim funding? For example, do separate HR team members support specific employee populations and should not have access to other employee populations under the same plan? When it comes to invoicing, is there a centralized unit who manages payment?

There are no divisional differences in plan sponsor access to the current vendor’s system.

However, if your system is capable of offering different types of access, please describe in detail in your proposal. Currently, there are no invoicing/billing responsibilities for the County with respect to the current vendor’s services. The County’s program manager does forward invoices to the current vendor for payment from the administrative funding account for such things as consulting services related to the plan. Participant claims are processed by the vendor’s third-party claims administrator who also provides claims reporting to the County. Reporting is ad hoc through the vendor’s plan sponsor website, or requested by the County from the vendor’s client relationship manager.

15. Are customized reports available to the County today at no additional cost?

Question # Question / Response

16. How many participants term from the County and become eligible to submit claims towards the plan on an annual basis?

Because the plan increased from approximately 5,500 participants to over 18,000 participants in 2023, the historical plan data related to terminations is no longer relevant.

However, over the past 12 months (September 1, 2023 to September 18, 2024), we can share that 1,649 employees terminated and became eligible for reimbursements from their HRA accounts. Of those, 36 were rehired and so are no longer eligible for reimbursements as they are once again actively employed by the County. Please note, the County usually has a much larger number of terminations in January, February and March, due to those months being the most popular months for County employees to retire in order to take advantage of the pension COLA for the year.

17. What are the hours of customer service today for account holders?

The current vendor’s self-service phone line is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The call center is open Monday through Friday between 5:30am and 6:00pm Pacific Time.

18. Please confirm onshore is required for both customer service and data accessing.

That is the County’s preference. If a proposer will have any services provided outside of the United States, the proposal must be very specific about what services will be provided offshore, by whom, and how participant data will be protected. Under no circumstances may any County/participant data be sent to locations outside of the United States.

19. Are the call quantities provided within the RFP reflective of annual call volumes? Quarterly?

Monthly?

Unless otherwise indicated, the data provided in the RFP is annual.

20. Will an SSN be provided alongside the alternative identification number?

Yes, our demographic file includes SSN.

21. Would the County be accepting of statements being emailed monthly versus mailed quarterly? We mail annual statements for those who do not have an email on file.

Monthly or quarterly statements are acceptable but please specify frequency and delivery options/defaults in your proposal.

22. Are the IVR expectations of the details that can be accessible/presented via IVR as outlined within the RFP the County's current state with their incumbent, or is this desired-state?

The call center and IVR capabilities listed in the RFP are generally indicative of current service levels. To the extent that your organization is or is not capable of providing certain functionality for various methods of communication and plan access, please indicate the specifics in response to Questionnaire #114, Access Channel Functionality.

23. Are educational meetings both during Open Enrollment, ongoing, and both large group and one-on-one sessions all available at no cost to the County today?

Question # Question / Response Currently, educational seminars are offered once per month, virtually, and participants are able to contact the retirement plan specialists to request a one-on-one meeting at any time (virtually or in-person). Additionally, several times per year, the retirement plan specialists conduct in-person group presentations and attend Open Enrollment or pre-retirement seminars. All at no cost to County.

24. Is the County charged fees for custom communications and custom marketing materials by their incumbent today?

25. We will not be able to agree to the terms of all the in-person requests. Would the County be open and willing to hear our proposed offering on how we can successfully educate, leaning primarily on virtual methods including recorded webinars?

Please provide details in your proposal and clearly state to what extent in-person services will or will not be available.

26. Is the County willing to incur fees for custom solutions such as customized reports and communications?

Please provide details in your proposal.

27. Who is the County's Benefit Administration Platform partner today?

The County’s Benefits Administration Vendor has no role in the HRA plan and there is no interaction between this vendor and the HRA recordkeeper and we do not anticipate this to change in the future.

28. Who is the County's payroll platform partner today?

County processes our own payroll using a custom payroll system.

29. Is the County willing to build file specifications to fit the proposing Contractor's system requirements, or is the County expecting the vendor to accept the existing files as-is?

County is open to making changes but please be aware that we have system limitations which may delay or limit the types of changes that can be made to the existing outbound files. If your system has specific file requirements, please be sure to specify them in your proposal.

30. Who are the County's medical, dental, and vision carriers?

This information is not relevant for this RFP as there is no interaction between these carriers and the HRA recordkeeper.

31. Are there any anticipated marketings/changes with the County's file partners or carriers?

Not as it relates to the HRA plan.

32. If the proposer cannot accommodate the administrative fees being covered by the participant, would this be a non-negotiable?

Question # Question / Response No but it will be taken into consideration when evaluating the cost component of your proposal.

33. Are there any file integrations in place today to streamline the claim filing and/or reimbursement process today between the incumbent and the County's carriers?

There are no claim processing interactions between the HRA plan recordkeeper and any carriers providing benefits to County retirees.

34. Are deviations allowed to be noted from the outlined Scope of Services and if so, does the

County have a preferred method in which these deviations are presented? For example, in a redline format where we strike verbiage and provide explanations?

Any deviations from the Scope of Services must be provided in a Redline to the Attachment A, Scope of Services, and submitted with your proposal.

35. Are the proposed Performance Guarantees outlined within the RFP the existing Performance

Guarantees offered by the incumbent?

The current vendor contract does have Performance Guarantees which are similar, but not identical, to the ones requested in the RFP.

36. If we were awarded the opportunity to present to the County, would we have permission to utilize the County's logo to demonstrate our cobranding/customization capabilities?

37. May we be provided the point evaluation for the evaluation criteria outlined within the RFP?

Please refer to Addendum #2, HRA RFP - Evaluation Criteria and Scoring, uploaded to

OpenGov along with this Q&A response.

38. There had been a "References" attachment available for download initially, however the download was not reflective of the County's reference request. We have not seen an updated version uploaded to the site. Please advise if we can expect a revised References attachment to be uploaded for completion by proposing vendors.

The document had been inadvertently replaced with an erroneous document. A new document titled, “Offeror’s References (Updated)” has been uploaded to the Project Documents tab in OpenGov.

39. Will the County accept redlines to the proposed Performance Guarantees?

Yes, it will be evaluated along with all other components of the proposal submission.

40. Due to the proposals not being able to be confidential or components of the response to be deemed confidential, we will need to respond accordingly to some of the questionnaire prompts in which we do not provide details without an NDA in place. Please advise if the County has an alternative proposed solution or if this will be an acceptable approach.

This is acceptable for the written proposal but may require further information to be provided for clarification during the interview/oral presentation. The written proposal must contain

Question # Question / Response sufficient information to allow the evaluators to determine whether or not the proposal should be moved forward to the next phase of the evaluation process.

41. Does the incumbent provide an interactive module today at no cost for participants?

42. Is the administration fee of 0.19% annual or quarterly?

The 0.19% fee is annual. Fees are calculated and reflected on participant accounts on a quarterly basis.

43. If the proposing vendor cannot accommodate a reimbursement amount (in the amount of

$90,000 or any amount), will this reject us for consideration?

All responses will be evaluated and scored accordingly.

44. If the County will require the vendor to accept the County's files as is (eligibility/enrollments, contribution data, demographic details), may the file specifications please be provided for review?

The current biweekly demographic file includes the following fields:

• SSN

• Record Type – Enrollment, Termination, Maintenance (change in demographic data)

• Name

• Address1

• Address2

• City

• State

• Zip Code

• Gender

• Date of Birth

• Hire Date

• Plan Entry Date

• Termination Date

• Bargaining Unit

• Benefits Eligibility Date

A separate biweekly contribution file with contribution amounts and participant identifier (SSN) is transmitted to the vendor.

County is interested in exploring the option to change the biweekly demographic file format from the current Text file to a CSV file, adding additional data fields (such as Employee ID, work email address, and work phone number), and removing the Record Type field. Instead of sending a biweekly “changes only” file, the County would be interested in sending a full file each pay period with demographic data for all County employees, including new hires, Question # Question / Response terminations, and participant demographic updates such as address changes, bargaining unit changes, and changes to email address or phone numbers.

The vendor’s system would need to be able to determine whether to enroll, terminate, or update a participant’s data based on the biweekly demographic file from the County. For example:

• If a newly hired employee on the file does not have an existing record in the vendor’s system, the employee should be enrolled.

• If the file includes a termination date, the employee’s status should be set to terminated and benefits eligible.

• If there are no changes to an employee’s existing data, no action would be needed;

otherwise, the system should be updated with the new data from the file.

• If a termination date is included on the file for someone without a corresponding record in the vendor’s system, no action is required. (If the County were to send a full file, the file could include people who are not eligible for the plan and therefore, when they terminate, a termination record may be sent on the file but there would be no existing record for that person in the vendor’s system.)

Ideally, the vendor’s system will generate an activity/error report for all details after processing the biweekly demographic file. The system should not stop processing the file if there is an issue with one or a small number of records.

The vendor’s system must be capable of handling large files. The County currently has more than 18,000 employees eligible for this plan, and that number could potentially increase over time based on hiring/retention practices.

It is highly desirable for the vendor’s system to have a UAT environment to test new programing before it goes live in Production.

45. Are files built internally by an IT team at the County, or are file builds supported by the group's Ben Admin partner or another Third-Party?

The files are built internally by the County’s Auditor-Controller payroll IT team.

46. Is the County willing to have a basis point assessed on all assets in addition to the participants being charged a monthly administrative fee deducted directly from their funds?

All proposed fee schedules will be evaluated and scored accordingly.

47. How long has Mission Square Retirement been administrating the County's HRA plans?

Since April 1, 2009.

Question # Question / Response

48. Are there any areas of administration, or any plan features that the County looks to improve upon on?

County looks forward to seeing what the proposers can offer.

49. Does Mission Square administer any additional products/plans for the County?

No.

50. Are there any specific enhancements to the administration of the plans the County wishes to obtain with this solicitation?

County looks forward to seeing what the proposers can offer.

51. Can you please provide the number of participants that have claim reimbursements in the past year? The number in the RFP is the total number of claim reimbursements.

For the period 7/1/2023 to 6/30/2024:

Plan 803049

• # of Claims Processed: 22,276

• # of Participants submitting Claims: 956

• Total amount of claims reimbursed: $8,131,588

Plan 800161

• # of Claims Processed: 4,474

• # of Participants submitting Claims: 191

• Total amount of claims reimbursed: $753,741

Note: Please refer to Addendum #3 for correction of two typos on page 7 of the RFP.

52. Are there any overlap participants between the two plans? If yes, how many?

Potentially yes but it would be a very small number. Plan 800161 was the result of an early retirement incentive program in 2020. A total of 457 employees were eligible and received HRA contributions into Plan 800161. Of those, a small number had an existing HRA account in Plan 803049. Those people were offered the opportunity to combine their accounts and consolidate funds into their Plan 803049 account. As of today, there are only 327 participants with a balance remaining in Plan 800161. Of that number, a few may still have an account in both plans but it would be a small number. Also, as Plan 800161 is a closed plan, there will be no more participants added to that plan nor any more HRA contributions added to participant accounts in that plan.

53. Has the put on the MISSIONSQUARE PLUS FUND S11 been executed yet?

County has not exercised the put for the MissionSquare Plus Fund. The County may evaluate this option at the conclusion of this RFP process. Please note, County has requested all vendors to state in their proposals as to whether or not they will be able to maintain the MissionSquare Plus stable value fund on their platforms.

Question # Question / Response

54. Please confirm the trust type for each plan, including if either plan includes a 401(h) component.

Plan assets are currently held in an Integral Part Trust established by MissionSquare Retirement. The IPT is distinct from a Section 115 trust and is based on private letter rulings (PLRs) issued by the Internal Revenue Service.

Please note the specifics of your proposed trust arrangement in your proposal.

55. Please confirm the trust type for each plan, including if either plan includes a 401(h) component.

Duplicative of Question #54.

56. Are there service level concerns with the current administrator?

No.

57. Do you currently pay a Trust and Custodial Fee? If so, what is that cost?

No. All costs are covered by the asset-based administrative fee of 0.19%.