Our story
David Witz launched PlanTools on January 1, 2009, with one job: help a financial advisor show a retirement plan committee that its investments were being watched, and watched the way the committee said they would be.
The first product was a quarterly report and an investment policy statement. The policy statement wrote down the criteria a fund had to meet. The quarterly report showed, fund by fund, whether it met them. Together they were the core of a prudent process, and the proof that one had been followed.
David had spent years writing about fiduciary risk, ERISA section 404(c), and what plan committees are asked to produce when a decision is questioned. He knew a report and a policy statement were only part of that record, and that advisors were assembling the rest by hand, in spreadsheets, binders, and email, every quarter, for every plan.
The rules were changing at the same time. New Schedule C reporting and the 408(b)(2) fee disclosure regulation put plan fees and service arrangements under scrutiny they had never had. Advisors now had to benchmark what a plan paid, identify who its fiduciaries were, and keep the documentation where they could find it years later.
So the platform grew, one need at a time. Scorecards on the criteria each committee adopted. Monitoring that carries from one quarter to the next. Benchmarking of cost and service. A Fiduciary Vault for the plan’s documents. Reports a committee meeting can be built from. What started as a quarterly report and an IPS became a practice management ecosystem: the place an advisor’s retirement plan work actually happens.
Justin Witz joined on January 1, 2011, after returning from Iraq and serving in the United States Air Force. He leads technology at PlanTools today. Everything advisors use, including the platform, the reports, and the systems behind them, is written and run by our own team.
The idea underneath it hasn’t changed since 2009: support decisions with evidence, not opinion, and keep the record that shows it.
