Can You Leave an Insurance-Company 401(k) Without Losing the Guarantee?

A manufacturer with roughly $55 million in retirement assets and about 1,000 participants ran its entire 401(k) through a single insurance-company vendor. The investment menu was the carrier's own, built around a proprietary group annuity contract that guaranteed participants 1.75% a year. On paper it looked stable. Underneath, the plan paid for that stability twice: once in a below-market guarantee, and again in compensation the prior advisor had built into the investments.

That second cost is the one sponsors rarely see. The advisor's pay was embedded in the funds, so it moved with the assets and never appeared as a line item the committee approved. Every provider in the lineup had been chosen, in part, around that arrangement. Regency stripped the embedded compensation out and removed any service provider that priced itself the same way. A fee-only consultant is paid by the plan, not by the products on it, so nothing in the structure was ours to protect.

Open architecture changed the math. Because Regency holds no proprietary funds and takes no payment from any carrier, we could take the plan to the broader guaranteed-rate market instead of one insurer's shelf. That access won the plan exclusive entry to a 5.25% crediting rate, as of June 2026, against the 1.75% the proprietary contract had locked in. Same role in the menu, three and a half points more for participants.

Across every layer of cost — the improved crediting rate, the advisor compensation we removed, and the repriced service providers — the plan is projected to save more than $2 million in fees and foregone interest over five years. The full analysis is available to qualified plan sponsors on request.

None of it asked the committee for a leap of faith. It took a market test run by someone with nothing to sell. Regency managed the transition end-to-end and documented the comparison for the plan's fiduciary file, the record that shows the decision was prudent and not merely favorable.