Defined Contribution Plans
Benefits built through contributions to individual accounts, reflecting contributions, investment results, and fees. We look at who contributes, how it is allocated, and how it fits the wider retirement strategy.
Executive Compensation and Benefits Consulting
Request a BriefingRetention and Succession Decisions, Made With Experience
Bridges and Associates works with clients on executive compensation and benefits, and on the retention and succession decisions tied to them.
We begin with what you want to accomplish, not with a product. We evaluate retirement and incentive plan structures against your objectives, your financial commitments, and your responsibilities to your executives. What comes out of that is a framework you can actually decide from.
- 80+ Years
- Combined financial services experience
- 40 Years
- One partner's career in this business
- 2 Partners
- The people you work with directly
- Independent
- No insurance or securities products sold
What We Advise On
Each structure answers a different design question. Which one fits depends on who participates, what you are trying to accomplish, the financial commitment, and the plan requirements that apply.
Nonqualified Deferred Compensation
Compensation paid in a future period, outside a qualified retirement plan, for selected executive, retention, or retirement objectives. Payment timing and tax rules need careful review.
Defined Benefit Plans
A specified benefit, commonly set by a formula tied to compensation and service. We weigh the intended benefit against funding obligations, cost variability, and administration.
Phantom Stock Plans
Compensation linked to share value or its growth under a defined formula, without granting actual shares. Valuation, vesting, payment events, and cash needs all have to be addressed.
These structures overlap. A deferred phantom stock arrangement may also fall under nonqualified deferred compensation rules. Legal, tax, actuarial, and accounting input is coordinated as the design requires.
What a Review Looks Like
A structured review connects your objectives with the relevant structures, their financial implications, and a defined next step. Scope and professional responsibilities are settled before any plan development begins.
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Understand the People and the Timeline
Your leadership requirements, the outcome you want, the decision timeline, and the compensation and benefit arrangements already in place.
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Compare the Structures
Participation, benefit design, vesting, payment timing, and how each structure relates to the retention or succession objective driving the review.
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Examine Costs and Responsibilities
Projected costs, funding or payment obligations, administration, and what changes when the assumptions do, with the right professionals on the technical questions.
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Define the Decision
A comparison of the alternatives, the material assumptions, the open issues, and who is responsible for what.
The Questions We Start With
You establish the need and the people it affects. We make sure the arrangement is clear about what it is for and what it commits you to.
- Which people are critical to the organization's future, and for how long?
- What behavior or contribution should the compensation arrangement reward?
- What retirement, leadership, or ownership change is approaching?
- What cost, funding, risk, and approval requirements must the plan accommodate?
When the Client Is a Bank
Most of our experience is in financial services, and a bank carries a test other organizations do not: incentive compensation has to answer for risk, effective controls, and governance. We keep that in front of the board from the first conversation, and we frame every alternative so a committee can weigh its purpose, its financial implications, and its consistency with the bank's oversight practices.
Informed by the Federal Reserve's Guidance on Sound Incentive Compensation Policies.
Who You Will Work With
Tommy BridgesPresident
Rick McCarterConsultant
More than 80 years of combined financial services experience, including work with banking executives and financial advisors. One of us has spent 40 years in this business.
We do not sell insurance or securities, and we are not attorneys, accountants, or actuaries. We work alongside the professionals who provide that advice, so what we recommend is never bent by a product we carry.
Start With a Short Conversation
Fifteen to twenty minutes. We introduce the firm, learn your priorities, walk through the structures that apply, and set out what a review would involve. Nothing is put forward for approval.