Stop the Scavenger Hunt: How to Fix Broken Retirement-Plan Servicing

Imagine a simple call: a 401(k) participant needs a loan.

What happens next? An agent opens three different PDFs, scrolls through endless pages of dense legal text, and hunts for the one clause that details the loan amount and implications. They are toggling between an adoption agreement, a Summary Plan Description (SPD), and a separate procedure guide, all while the participant waits on the line.

Queue the Jeopardy theme song!

Ten minutes later, the answer is finally delivered. It's correct, but there's no record of which section in which of the three documents was used.

Now, multiply that by hundreds of retirement plans and thousands of calls every day. Suddenly, each extra minute on the phone becomes a wasted cost, and every undocumented answer turns into a potential audit risk. Not to mention the headache and frustration on both the customer and the customer service front. This isn't service; it's a structural problem.

The real constraint: documents designed to fail

The documents themselves are the root of the inefficiency. They were originally drafted for compliance reporting, not for easy service or retrieval.

Think about it:

• Each employer edits its own version, so the same key clauses appear in different formats and on different pages.
• Crucial details are often buried in cross-references and footnotes.
• Agents spend most of their time searching, not advising.

Even with great training, the entire process relies on human recall and guesswork rather than verified retrieval. This structure guarantees inconsistency and drives up your operating costs.

The solution: service intelligence, not just automation

The work doesn't have to run this way. The future of retirement-plan servicing lies in retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG for short, which transforms a chaotic document search into a controlled, auditable workflow. And, when coupled with AI, it leads to that promised land of fast, accurate, and simplified results.

How the new workflow runs

1. Ingestion & indexing: You’ll leverage an AI platform, like Vertesia, that ingests all adoption agreements, SPDs, and procedures, breaking them down into defined, searchable sections.
2. Verified retrieval: When a participant asks a question (e.g., "Can I take a hardship withdrawal?"), the system instantly retrieves the exact, cited clause that answers it.
3. Agent-led review: The customer service representative checks the draft, confirms it against plan rules, and gives the participant the verified answer.
4. Full audit trail: The system logs the entire exchange, citing the source document and section used.

The agent still owns the judgment and the communication; the system simply removes the time-consuming scavenger hunt, and assists with delivering accurate results.

Example in practice: hardship withdrawals

That 10-minute difference repeats across every plan and every question, every day. And it adds up to significant time savings.

The measurable effects

This shift to service intelligence delivers a powerful return on investment for recordkeepers, third-party administrators, and large plan sponsors—anyone handling high-volume, plan-specific questions.

The broader point? Stronger fiduciary control

For too long, retirement-plan servicing has relied on human memory and recall to interpret complex documents. The next stage is Service Intelligence—where AI enhanced retrieval, citation, and review replace memory as the basis for accuracy.

This change does not automate judgment; it standardizes how evidence is found. The result is not just faster service, but stronger fiduciary control over one of the most complex areas of financial services.

Stop hunting, start citing

If your service teams still search through adoption agreements or SPDs during calls, you're paying a premium for risk and inefficiency.

Schedule a session with Doculabs and Vertesia. We will use your actual plan documents to show the workflow in real time: how our AI platform retrieves clauses, cites them, and records each exchange for audit. 

You will see the process operating inside a live service environment, using your material and your rules. Let's fix your retirement-plan servicing.