Advertisement
Defined Contribution Plans
For the IRS, fiscal year (FY) 2023 “was a transitional year,” largely due to funding provided under the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and application of technology, according to Commissioner of Internal Revenue Danny Werfel. His made his remarks in the agency’s most recent data book, an annual...
READ MORE
Vanguard and Ascensus have announced a major deal that could potentially shake up the small-business retirement plan market.
According to the April 16 announcement, Ascensus has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Vanguard's Individual 401(k), Multiple Participant SEP (Multi-SEP), and...
READ MORE
Spring cleaning is well underway. But that need not be limited to closets, kitchens, and garages—it can serve retirement plans and their administrators too. And one such prime function is addressing missing participants.
Missing participants—former employees whose benefits remain in the plan but...
READ MORE
The IRS on April 16 issued guidance on certain specified required minimum distributions (RMDs) for 2024. It adds that the final regulations it plans to issue related to RMDs will apply for purposes of determining RMDs for calendar years beginning on or after Jan. 1, 2025.
The guidance is...
READ MORE
Collective investment trusts (CITs) are a greater focus of attention and activity in the wake of SECURE 2.0, as a recent Congressional Research Service (CRS) report highlights.
In “Pensions and Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs): Investment Issues,” the CRS provides an overview of pension...
READ MORE
Longevity and greater spending are "putting the U.S. retirement system under immense strain," BlackRock CEO Larry Fink wrote in his annual shareholder letter.
In the letter, bluntly titled “Time to Rethink Retirement,” Fink argued that capital markets will be critical in addressing what he called...
READ MORE
A recent “news” post about a blog post finds some curious “faults” with the 401(k).
The news item carried the provocative title “‘Rich Dad’ Robert Kiyosaki Reveals Why the 401(k) Is a ‘Horrible’ Retirement Plan.” It originally ran on GoBankingRates.com, but was subsequently picked up in...
READ MORE
What's in the episode?
Defined contribution plans, and 401(k)s specifically, are increasingly under attack, criticized by think tanks and academics for perceived (yet easily refuted) flaws. What—and who—is behind the effort? Are the criticisms resonating and why are they happening now? Does the...
READ MORE
The Illinois Senate may vote soon on a bill that would require school districts in the Land of Lincoln that offer their employees a 403(b) plan to enter into a contract with only one vendor in the plan.
On Feb. 14, 2024, Sen. Karina Villa (D-West Chicago) introduced language for SB2568 stating...
READ MORE
Harkening back to the early days of the administration, President Biden’s fiscal year 2025 budget, once again, proposes significant tax increases on corporations and upper-income taxpayers, including a proposal to limit how much taxpayers are allowed to accumulate in their retirement plans. ...
READ MORE
I’m not sure how old I was when I first saw “Night of the Living Dead”—but I have long been intrigued by stories of a zombie apocalypse—where mindless beings inexplicably rise from the dead, with no memory of their past, just a relentless (and apparently insatiable) hunger for…well, “us.”
That is...
READ MORE
It wasn’t high costs or 401(k)s—necessarily—that ended the corporate pension plan’s reign, but rather ERISA itself.
A recent paper from John Langbein, Yale Law School’s Sterling Professor Emeritus of Law and Legal History, argued that the 1974 landmark law’s structure made defined benefit (DB)...
READ MORE
[Updated: On Friday morning, the House passed H.R. 2799, Expanding Access to Capital Act of 2023, the larger bill that included the CITs in 403(b)s amendment, on a party line vote of 212 - 205. The bill will now go to the Senate. A quote from ARA CEO Brian Graff is added below.]
On March 7, the...
READ MORE
The ink was barely dry on the denial of a motion to dismiss the suit, when American Airlines filed a motion of summary judgment, claiming that “there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and the [movant] is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.”
Where We’ve Been
Participant-plaintiff (...
READ MORE
What's in the episode?
‘Retirement provocateur’ Kathleen Kennedy Townsend played an instrumental role in the debate over retirement issues, resulting in significant policy ideas. A founder of the Georgetown University Center for Retirement Initiatives, the 40-year political veteran and former...
READ MORE
Familiar 401(k) critic Teresa Ghilarducci testified before Congress on Feb. 28, claiming America’s retirement system is “severely broken” and seniors must either “work or rely on the kindness of strangers to dodge the increasing risk of elder poverty."
Ghilarducci, a professor at the New School...
READ MORE
Just as Congress gets ready to debate whether there is a “retirement crisis,” new survey results from an organization supportive of restoring defined benefit plans finds that Americans are increasingly worried about retirement.
According to the survey results from the National Institute on...
READ MORE
Congress’ watchdog agency apparently thinks so. That was one of the recommendations in a newly released report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).
A “pension dashboard” could be useful in the United States to help participants track their retirement savings when they change jobs, but...
READ MORE
Editor’s Note: This is part I of a two-part series.
It’s not unusual for older generations to look askance at their younger counterparts and dismiss them with a harumph at the thought that one day they will come to the fore. But some recent data suggests that in the case of the youngest...
READ MORE
Amid the recent attacks on the 401(k) savings system, the key Senate committee with jurisdiction over ERISA plans to hold a hearing next week to examine what it describes as “confronting the retirement crisis facing working class Americans.”
The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP...
READ MORE