Silicon Valley Retirement Services

The firm provides bundled retirement-plan services including plan design, recordkeeping coordination, investment menu construction and monitoring, fiduciary oversight under ERISA Section 3(38), and employee education. Its model integrates investment selection with compliance support, targeting mid-sized technology employers that want a single point of accountability for their qualified retirement plans.

Yes. Silicon Valley Retirement Services acts as an ERISA Section 3(38) investment manager, which means it accepts discretionary authority and fiduciary liability for selecting and monitoring the plan's investment menu. This transfers the legal responsibility for investment decisions from the plan sponsor — typically the employer's retirement committee — to the advisor, a meaningful distinction from non-discretionary advisory arrangements under Section 3(21).

The firm focuses on mid-sized technology companies in Northern California, typically with 20 to 500 plan participants. Its client base spans pre-IPO startups through publicly traded enterprises in the San Francisco Peninsula, San Jose, and East Bay corridors. The practice is built around the specific retirement-plan challenges facing tech workforces, including managing concentrated equity positions and designing plans for highly compensated employee populations.

No. Silicon Valley Retirement Services does not manage proprietary mutual funds, collective investment trusts, or separate accounts. It acts exclusively as a fiduciary advisor constructing and monitoring plan-level fund menus using third-party investment vehicles — predominantly low-cost institutional share classes of index funds and target-date series from managers such as Vanguard and BlackRock.

Payroll providers like ADP and Paychex typically offer integrated 401(k) services where recordkeeping and investment platforms are vertically bundled, often with limited fiduciary support. Silicon Valley Retirement Services provides independent fiduciary oversight, investment selection and monitoring, and plan-design consulting that sits above the recordkeeping layer. This allows plan sponsors to retain their existing payroll provider while receiving specialized fiduciary advice that generic bundled platforms do not deliver.