9 ways plan sponsors can up their fiduciary game

The surveys keep coming: A sizable percentage of plan fiduciaries don’t realize they are fiduciaries —which means that they don’t understand what being a fiduciary requires them to do. The term “ostrich fiduciaries” can be used to describe them — they are people who keep their heads in the sand to avoid seeing their responsibilities and all of those auditors and plaintiff’s lawyers waiting to hold them accountable.

But people who know that they are fiduciaries can also have gaps in their knowledge or just be dealing with crises as they come up. They may never get the big picture. For those fiduciaries self-aware enough to know there are things they need to learn, here are some ways they can raise the bar in fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities.