Pre-Allocation Planning Meeting
January 4, 2007

One of the most important steps of the allocation process is the pre-allocation meeting. This meeting is ideally conducted 1-2 months prior to the start of the plan year. If your plan year has started and you have not yet conducted a pre-allocation meeting, I strongly recommend that you have one, as you would still find it to be effective and beneficial. The Plan Administrator and ESOP advisors will most certainly be involved, but you should also consider involving other parties that could add to the process, such as ESOP counsel, trustees, accountants, etc. If this is your first planning meeting or if you have not met since last year, you should allot more time for the meeting. You will spend the majority of the meeting reviewing last year’s allocation process and finalizing this year’s timeline (to maximize the meeting’s effectiveness, a discussion draft should be prepared prior to the meeting). In addition to the timeline, you will want to discuss any other outstanding planning issues and set the date for the next planning meeting.

To assist you with the planning process, I recommend that you check out the ESOP Planning section of our website (listed in our main menu). It addresses some of the different items you should consider during the pre-allocation meeting.