The IAP trustees take their job of stewarding the Plan very seriously, understanding their responsibility to ensure the Plan provides the benefits for which our members have worked so hard. This is why adjustments to our plans are always being considered so that our plans may grow and perform to the best of their ability.

A few years ago, the trustees to the Individual Account Plan, with input from the Plan’s investment consultant, reevaluated the investment vehicles in our IAP. Based on a careful evaluation of cost versus return, the trustees decided to replace one of the mutual funds in the Plan—Fidelity Contrafund K Shares—with a similar investment vehicle—the Fidelity Contrafund Commingled Pool—that bears lower operating expenses.

The Fidelity Contrafund Commingled Pool is considered a collective investment trust or a CIT. While mutual funds are available to individual investors in retirement and non-retirement accounts, CITs are solely available to retirement plans such as our IAP. Although this change doesn’t have a huge immediate impact on our individual plan participants, switching to a lower cost CIT as an investment option affords our IAP a greater overall return on gains as the higher fees of other investment products, such as mutual funds, place a drag on performance.

For more information on the IAP’s switch to the Fidelity Contrafund Commingled Pool, visit the EWTF’s website at ewtf.org, click on the “resources” tab and scroll down to “IAP Mutual Fund vs CIT Comparison Chart.”