Company Profile

Creative Pension Administrators, Inc. is an organization that was formed to fill a growing gap in technically qualified firms to provide proactive, comprehensive and cost-effective retirement plan services tailored to meet your specific objectives and changing needs.

We can help you take advantage of important tax-savvy opportunities afforded by qualified plans, while assisting you, the business owner and your employees build new capital. We are able to take a program from the initial ideas and planning stage to preparing and filing the required documents to maintaining the ongoing records, testing for, and ensuring compliance under, the myriad of government rules, producing year-end filings and periodic account statements for participants.

We pride ourselves in integrating three essential elements needed for incomparable service:

1. Highly proficient and skilled consultants in the plan design, pension, legal and administration fields,
2. Experienced administration and systems support staff, and
3. State-of-the-art computer software tools to deliver plan services efficiently, accurately and on time.

We specialize in designing and servicing plans that favor the highly compensated individuals in corporations, partnerships and sole proprietorships. We also offer innovative, sophisticated and tax-effective ideas, such as keeping insurance proceeds out of an estate, and using tax-deductible dollars to fund buy-sell agreements.

Our principal, Richard T. Nathanson, has over 30 years of experience in the retirement planning field. His in-depth expertise in delivering high-quality client services spans all varieties of qualified plans, including Defined Benefit, Money Purchase, 401(k) and Profit Sharing Plans.

The Key Players

Richard T. Nathanson, CLU, APM President

Richard T. Nathanson, CLU, APM has been a leader in pension plan design and administration for over 30 years. Prior to forming Creative Pension Administrators, Inc., he served as a pension consultant for two major insurance companies in the New York metropolitan area.

Richard specializes in plan design, particularly for small to mid-sized business entities, and has been highly successful in crafting plans which give a lion's share of the contribution to the principal. He coordinates the efforts involved in preparing the plan and trust documents, and submission to the IRS, answering any questions they may have, ensuring the procurement of a favorable determination letter.

He has been responsible for the ongoing servicing of plans, entailing coordination of required input, calculation of allocations, preparation of annual filings and ensuring that clients receive service in a timely fashion. He also consults on plan amendments required by constantly changing statutes and regulations to ensure the plan's continued qualified status.

Richard holds a B.S. in Business Administration from Wayne State University in Detroit, and is an Associated Professional Member of the American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries (ASPPA) and a member of the Society of Financial Service Professionals.

Becky Kong Assistant Vice President of Operations

Becky Kong is our Assistant Vice President of Operations and has been involved in the pension field for the past 20 years. Becky is a graduate of the State University of New York at Stony Brook with a B.S. Degree in Mathematics. Before entering the pension field, she was a high school math teacher in the "Big Apple". Her pension career has entailed working for several pension consulting firms in the New York metropolitan area prior to joining Creative in 1998. Becky essentially is a jack of all trades when it comes to pension administration. Her area of expertise not only includes plan design and installation, but also hands on administration on virtually every type of qualified plan available in the marketplace. Becky easily integrates her knowledge of Excel with the pension software used in the office, to provide our clients with a dynamic state-of-the art reporting package!

Bernie Roach Sr. Pension Consultant Director of Marketing

Upon graduation from Richmond College with a degree in psychology, Bernie embarked on a career in human services and worked for a number of large not for profit organizations as well as for government agencies.

He entered the pension field after completing the paralegal program in employee benefits at Adelphi University on Long Island.

Since entering the pension field he has held managerial positions with a number of pension consulting firms and with the actuarial division of a small life insurance company located in New York City.

Bernie's areas of expertise includes the drafting of plan documents and amendments, defined benefit plan design and administration and cross tested defined contribution design and administration.

Since joining Creative Pension Administrators, Inc. in April of 2008, Bernie has become a welcome addition to the firm based upon his well rounded grasp of the complex issues pertaining to plan design and administration and his ability to communicate these technical issues in a manner that is easily understandable to the layman. 

Eva Wong Pension Consultant

Eva Wong is a Pension Administrator/Consultant and joined the pension field with Creative in 2002. Eva is a graduate of Baruch College in NYC with a B.A. in Accounting. Prior to joining our firm, Eva worked in the accounting field. She is currently responsible for the various tasks relating to Profit Sharing/401(k) administration, including preparation of valuation reports and 5500 Series forms, along with distribution processing and trust accounting duties. Eva also serves as a liaison to many of our clients giving the personal touch to this very complex field. Eva resides in Union, NJ with her husband and two children.

Grace Nathanson Office Manager

Grace Nathanson is Creative’s Office Manager. Grace holds a B.S. Degree in Education from the Technological University of the Philippines in Manila. Prior to commencing with her career in "Pensions", Grace held jobs as a high school teacher and also worked on Wall Street for a period of time. Grace’s responsibilities include making sure that all the paperwork flows smoothly through the office into the clients’ hands in a very timely manner! Grace has superior word processing skills (Word and WordPerfect) and is also involved with the data entry function of our pension valuation system as well as in the preparation of the IRS form 5500 Series. She is also assigned the task of overseeing our new millennium's Internet based projects which will include plan document generation.

Michelle Kong Administrative Assistant

Marilyn Sloane Lisman, JD, CLU Counsel

Marilyn, who serves as Creative's outside counsel, has over 30 years experience as an employee benefits attorney, with a primary focus on compliance issues involving qualified pension and profit sharing plans (ERISA), including the popular 401(k) plans as well as plans for tax exempt organizations. She has been an active pension practitioner since the enactment of ERISA and has assisted clients in dealing with the issues that have arisen as the statutory and regulatory climate has changed.

Marilyn was a Senior Vice President of Mutual of America Life Insurance Company, which specialized in developing and maintaining plans for thousands of tax exempt organizations, and was thereafter Chief Counsel of Shore & Reich/Schloss & Co., which concentrated on private sector entrepreneurial plans.

A graduate of the University of Vermont, she obtained her law degree from the Columbia University School of Law. She is a past president of the New York Chapter of Chartered Life Underwriters and has been a frequent speaker at seminars. Marilyn is listed in numerous Who's Who.

Michael Frank, FSA, MAAA, EA Consulting Actuary

Michael Frank, FSA, MAAA, EA serves as Creative's consulting actuary in the Defined Benefit arena. He was educated at the Bronx High School of Science and the City College of New York where he received a BS degree in mathematics, graduating Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa. Michael originally worked in the large plan area. After passing all his exams to be a Fellow of the Society of Actuaries, he switched to the small plan marketplace and has been consulting in that area for over 30 years. He has been referred to as the "Actuary to the Stars" due to his work with famous celebrity types over the years who shall remain forever nameless! Michael’s passions include collecting, travel, and he is also an avid sports enthusiast.