For Financial Professionals
Working together to help our mutual clients achieve their goals
Many of our participants enlist the help of a financial advisor and tax accountant as they plan for retirement. We’re happy to serve our participants by partnering with their advisors.
Our primary aim is to help our participants achieve a comfortable and dignified retirement. RPB is not a registered investment advisor, so we don't offer financial or investment advice. That is why we place such importance on working toward this shared goal with you. We’re also available to help explain the more unique benefits—such as the parsonage tax exclusion—that are available to our participants who are clergy.
We’re ready to partner with you.
Let us know if there’s anything we can help you with to best serve our mutual clients. Call or email Robert Perry, Director of Participant and Employer Services.
Working with RPB
Learn about who we are and why we were founded, what we provide to our plan participants, and how to help them with their accounts.
And make sure to talk to your clients for access to RPB account information.
RPB is a cornerstone institution of the Reform Movement that has been working to enhance the financial security of our professionals and help them attain a dignified retirement since 1944.
Since then, our focus has been on providing high-quality, low-cost retirement and insurance benefits to empower our plan participants to retire with dignity. Because we focus specifically on the Reform Movement, we offer benefits that other retirement plan providers can't.
Our investment management team is guided by our commitment to industry best practices, sound investing principles, and the tenets of our Jewish Values Investing Policy, which compels RPB to consider environmental, social, and responsible corporate governance factors in our investment decision making.
RPB offers three tiers of investment choices so participants can customize their retirement portfolios.
Tier 1 consists of five target allocation funds, each of which offers a complete, diversified portfolio in single fund, for those investors looking for a simplified approach. The funds are designed to meet a specific investment goal—growth, growth and income, or income—based on the participant’s risk tolerance and time horizon, and to keep pace with their benchmarks over a full market cycle with lower volatility than the market as a whole.
Most participants who invest in Tier 1 will likely only need one of the target allocation funds to meet their current financial goals. However, this chart shows how to use multiple Tier 1 funds if a participant is trying to achieve an asset mix that’s different from the pre-built mixes.
For participants who want to build their own diversified portfolio across asset classes, we offer our Tier 2 self-directed funds from Vanguard and RPB. And our Tier 3 socially-responsible Reform Jewish Values (RJV) Stock Fund allows participants to align their retirement investments with their Jewish values.
Resources: RPB's fund fact sheets and fees.
Participants can make both pre-tax and Roth post-tax contributions to our 403(b) plan. Employers can only make pre-tax contributions.
We also offer a Rabbi Trust non-qualified deferred compensation account for employer contributions over the IRS limit.
Participants can easily manage their accounts through the Fidelity NetBenefits website where they can change their allocations, transfer assets between funds, view account history and statements, and more.
RPB has different distribution options to suit our participants’ needs from monthly payments to lump sum distributions. Participants request a distribution from their 403(b) retirement account by logging in to NetBenefits or contacting Fidelity at 1.800.343.0860.
RPB's plan allows retired clergy to exclude the amount of their annual housing expenses from their distribution income. This benefit—called the parsonage tax exclusion—can result in a substantial tax savings.
Once participants reach age 73 and are no longer working for an RPB-eligible employer, RPB will automatically calculate and distribute their 403(b) RMD proportionally from their funds before year-end. Your client has the option to defer their first RMD using the RPB Deferral Form and to designate different fund allocations for their RMD with the RMD Payment Form.
Distributions from the Rabbi Trust account are more restrictive and may require special financial planning.
Through our partner, Fidelity, RPB provides the necessary tax forms when participants take distributions: a 1099R for distributions from 403(b) accounts and W-2 for distributions from the Rabbi Trust non-qualified deferred compensation accounts. Fidelity also handles the federal and state tax withholding for all distributions.
RPB offers several insurance benefits as part of our broad commitment to helping our participants achieve financial security. These benefits include: complimentary basic term life insurance for eligible plan participants, with the option to purchase additional life insurance coverage; and a comprehensive long-term disability plan that includes retirement contribution insurance for those in our long-term disability plan who qualify.
How does RPB choose which investments to offer participants?
Our Investment Committee uses a disciplined process that adheres to leading financial and retirement industry practices.