Glossary of Terms Used
128-bit SSL Security - An SSL Certificate establishes a private communication channel enabling encryption of data during transmission. Encryption scrambles the data, essentially creating an envelope for message privacy.
401(k) - Refers to a retirement plan which allows employees to contribute a portion of their salary into a retirement savings vehicle created by an employer. Employers can match employee contributions in whole or in part.
Administrative fees - Expenses for basic administrative services, such as recordkeeping, accounting, legal and trustee services, that are necessary for administering an account or program.
AES Encryption - Converts text to ciphertext, which is specified as a number of repetitions of transformation rounds that convert the input plaintext into the final output of ciphertext. A set of reverse rounds are applied to transform ciphertext back into the original plaintext using the same encryption key.
Affinity Group - A group of persons affiliated with the same organization, trade association, college, etc., often receiving certain discounts or other privileges.
Automatic Rollover - A rollover of a participant's qualified-plan balance to an IRA without the participant's authorization.
Back-office operations - A back office is a part of most corporations where tasks dedicated to running the company itself take place. The term comes from the building layout of early companies where the front office would contain the sales and other customer-facing staff and the back office would be those manufacturing or developing the products or involved in administration but without being seen by customers.
Beneficiaries - A person(s) designated as the recipient of an IRA funds upon death of the accountholder.
Broker dealer - A company or other organization that trades securities for its customers. A broker dealer must be licensed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Contributions - Funds put into an IRA by an individual or company and/or employees.
Contributory IRA - An investment tool that allows individuals to contribute funds to a retirement account. The funds contributed are after-tax dollars that receive tax-deferred status once they are deposited into your contributory IRA.
Employer-mandated IRA - The government may soon require any company with 10-plus employees to offer an IRA program, if no other retirement program is available to its employees.
Fee schedule - Predetermined times or dates (annually, quarterly, monthly, etc.) when fees associated with an IRA are collected.
IRA - An Individual Retirement Account (IRA) is a personal tax-deferred or tax-free retirement plan. There are Traditional, Roth, SIMPLE and SEP IRAs that all have tax-free growth. IRAs were developed to provide individuals with the opportunity to build their own tax-preferred retirement savings. In the case of a Roth tax-deferred contribution, all contributions are taxed but investment growth and qualified withdrawals are never taxed.
IRA Rollover - A rollover is a tax-gree, reportable movement of cash or other assets between IRAs, between retirement plans, or between IRAs and eligible employer-sponsored plans.
IRA Program/Offering - The specific IRA option that a particular organization or business offers its members or employees.
IRA Provider - A business, organization or institution that offers IRA solutions to clients or directly to participants.
Mutual Fund - An investment company that issues shares of underlying securities held in the fund.
No-load IRA - Offers lower fees than load funds because they allow more of your investment to be allotted to shares of the fund, rather than going to upfront sales charges.
Safe-harbor IRA - An automatic rollover IRA that permits companies to establish an IRA account for a participant funded by a safe-harbor investment, typically a money market fund.
TPA (Third Party Administrator) - An organization that processes and maintains account records in an employee benefit plan.
Transaction fees - Fees incurred when making changes to your investment strategy or making new contributions.
