March 04, 2013 12:00 AM

P&I seeking DC execs with cutting-edge ideas

Entries are now being accepted for the 2013 Innovator Awards, sponsored by Pensions & Investments and the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association.

This is the second year P&I and the DCIIA have sponsored the awards, which are designed to recognize defined contribution plan executives and their employers for creative and unusual projects that help ensure participants have an adequate income at retirement.

Entries are due May 17.

The Innovator Awards entry form is available only online. Questions on the form are open-ended, so nominees can explain their projects any way they choose.

The winners will be announced at P&I's West Coast Defined Contribution Conference, to be held Oct. 27-29 in San Francisco.

Self-nominations are encouraged. Nominations also will be accepted from colleagues and from people outside the organization who are familiar with the work being done, or perhaps are involved as service providers.

If you nominate someone other than yourself, that nominee must authorize the nomination via a form included with the entry process.

The innovation must have been implemented on or after Jan. 1, 2012. Entries will be judged over the summer by a panel composed mostly of plan executives.

The Innovator Awards have no set categories and no minimum or maximum number of winners. In the inaugural year, five winners in four categories were chosen by the judges.

They were:

Dan Holupchinski, manager of retirement plans for Deluxe Corp., Shoreview, Minn., who won for plan design;

Kevin Hanney, director of non-U.S. pensions and savings plans at United Technologies Corp., Hartford, Conn., winner for innovation in retirement income;

Carol Cypert, since-retired manager of the City and County of San Francisco Employees Retirement System's deferred compensation program, who won for investing;