Our History

ATR, Inc. is a privately-owned, independent defined contribution plan recordkeeping and consulting firm. We provide plan accounting services to 401(k), profit sharing, stock ownership and money purchase plans. Today, ATR has 7 professional staff and over 200 recordkeeping clients. We have consulted with the largest corporations, mutual fund companies and technology companies regarding plan administration, vendor selection, product design and software development.

ATR began operations in January 1991 as a defined contribution recordkeeping and consulting firm. The founding principals – A. Paul Protos, Barry Subkow (retired), and Luisa Pino - were all part of Coopers & Lybrand’s (now PwC, PriceWaterhouseCoopers) benefits consulting group. At that time, Paul was a partner and National Practice leader for Coopers’ Defined Contribution Service with 15 years experience. Barry was a director and ERISA attorney with 15 years experience, and Luisa was a Senior Consultant with 8 years experience serving some of Coopers’ largest clients such as Johnson & Johnson.  
 

Our Service Philosophy

Recordkeeping is a service to employees and to company plan sponsors. ATR derives its name from the three most highly valued attributes of any service provider:

• Accuracy
• Timeliness
• Responsiveness

All of our attention is focused on living up to our name.

ATR continuously looks for opportunities to enhance the professional skills of our people and to implement improvements in technology. We harmonize our people and technology resources to exceed the service expectations of our clients and their plans’ participants.

Our clients’ business objectives drive plan design, and superior asset management drives selection of investment managers. As an independent company, ATR provides the defined contribution expertise and systems flexibility to integrate our client’s choice of the best of the best fund managers to deliver accurate, timely and responsive services. ATR, the plan sponsor, investment managers and trustees work together as a single plan administration team to administer the plan in a way that focuses on the best interests of our mutual clients – plan participants.  
 

Our Approach

ATR focuses on clients who:

• Need Flexibility
• Demand Accuracy
• Want Active, Consultative Partners
• Value Compliance Monitoring
• Seek Creative Solutions

ATR provides clients with the opportunity to customize reporting, voice response scripts, administrative procedures, and accounting methods to operate the plan the way clients want to.

Accuracy is critical. All activity is reconciled to external controls, and all participant accounts are fully reconciled to trust assets. ATR carefully monitors adherence to plan provisions, and uniform and consistent processing. We prepare a Management Report for company plan sponsors that includes:
 

Plan Analysis	documenting all changes in participants' accounts during the period
Trust Analysis	documenting all changes in trust assets during the period
Reconciliation of Plan to Trust	explaining any differences between plan and trust activity
Allocation Issues	identifying any plan accounting items that should be addressed
Compliance Issues	identifying any actual or potential problems in complying with regulations
Operational Issues	commenting on how the overall plan administration may be improved

Plans must operate in compliance with Internal Revenue Service and Department of Labor regulations. ATR's professional staff is well-schooled in regulatory requirements. We monitor compliance with regulatory limits and plan provisions. When an issue develops, we work with clients to understand its implications and provide them with an understanding of the choices available.  
 

Our People

The measure of a professional services firm is the quality of its people. At ATR, quality is personal. Each member of the professional staff knows that quality service means a lot more than delivering accurate and timely results. Quality means understanding the client’s needs, anticipating issues, and working actively and creatively to help the client’s plan deliver its promise to participants. We encourage our clients to give us feedback regarding staff performance and we will make changes to team members at a client’s request. ATR recognizes that our clients and our professional staff must work closely together to have deliver timely and quality services that our mutual clients – plan participants – expect.

ATR assigns a team to each client. Each client’s team may have from 2 to 6 professionals depending upon the scope of services. We consider each client’s situation and each professional’s caseload to determine the appropriateness of assigning a professional to a team. We are mindful to allow time in addition to scheduled and expected activities for each team member to be responsive to the fluctuating demands on their time created by unanticipated client service needs.  
 

Education and Professional Development

ATR employees are encouraged to attend professional development seminars to broaden their skills as business managers, supervisors, and communicators. Where appropriate, employees attend formal training classes in the use of computers for business.

On average, each employee receives approximately 10 days of continuing education each year. Employees attend or present at internal training sessions designed to keep them current on recent legislative or regulatory changes. Training is timed to preceed peak processing times for activities such as discrimination testing, year-end profit sharing allocations, Form 5500 preparation, and tax reporting.