Advertisement
ERISA
The Advisory Council on Employee Welfare and Pension Benefit Plans has recommended that the Department of Labor (DOL) issue new guidance on ERISA bonding, as well as a summary of the requirements for securing a fidelity bond that complies with DOL guidance.
The recommendations are contained in “...
READ MORE
Preparing and fling the Form 5500 Series is one of the more onerous tasks associated with administering retirement plans. But one should resist the impulse to just sign the thing and get it all over with, argues a recent blog entry.
In “The IRS Form 5500 – Look Before you Sign!” an entry in...
READ MORE
While noting that the case “presents novel legal questions concerning state-mandated retirement savings accounts,” and “implicates a significant body of judicial and regulatory interpretations of ERISA,” a federal judge has ruled – for the moment – that California’s state-run auto IRA retirement...
READ MORE
A federal appeals court has affirmed summary judgment in a class action suit involving 270,000 plan participants across more than 13,000 plans.
The suit was filed in 2015 by plaintiff John Teets, a participant in the Farmers’ Rice Cooperative 401(k) Savings Plan, which had contracted with Great-...
READ MORE
Summary plan descriptions (SPDs) are not optional — at least not for plans to which ERISA applies. And that includes retirement plans. A recent blog entry discusses SPD requirements and how they relate to retirement plans, participants and beneficiaries.
In “Summary Plan Descriptions: You Gotta...
READ MORE
Of late, we’ve been getting a lot of questions about legislation that would create open multiple employer plans (MEPs). Here’s the update.
Ever since the Department of Labor issued an explicit ruling in 2012 that an open MEP is not a single employee benefit pension plan but a group of single...
READ MORE
Plan fiduciaries have asked the nation’s highest court to weigh in on when ERISA’s three-year statute of limitations begins – and if disclosure alone is enough to start that clock.
In asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case, plan fiduciaries at Intel said the question presented was “...
READ MORE
The ratification of the 22nd amendment in 1951 may limit U.S. Presidents’ tenure, but that doesn’t mean their influence over a host of areas ends when their terms of office do. And that includes retirement readiness.
In “How 5 U.S. Presidents Continue to Influence Your Retirement Readiness Today...
READ MORE
In his First Quarter 2019 Washington Update, Robert Kaplan, the American Retirement Association’s Director of Technical Education, provided an overview of the new climate on Capitol Hill as well as recent regulatory developments affecting retirement plans.
On the Hill
With the changes that took...
READ MORE
Legislation has been introduced in the Bay State that would expand the Commonwealth’s auto-IRA program for private sector workers and establish a 401(k) parallel, with an employer mandate.
The first bill, SD 1902, introduced by state senator Patricia D. Jehlen, establishes the Massachusetts Secure...
READ MORE
A sharp drop in stock price – and allegations of prior knowledge by senior management of misdealings – seem likely to produce additional litigation.
The most recent example is a press release by the law firm of Zamansky LLC announcing that the firm has commenced an investigation of Johnson &...
READ MORE
The American Retirement Association (ARA), in a Dec. 12 letter to Joe Canary, Director of the Office of Regulations and Interpretations of the DOL’s Employee Benefits Security Administration, has suggested steps the agency can take to improve retirement security.
The ARA sent the letter as part of...
READ MORE
Managing participant data effectively is efficient, but it’s also more than that. Recent blog entries argue that it also provides a way to meet fiduciary responsibilities and address the problem of missing participants — if not obviate it in the first place.
It’s not hard to get into that position...
READ MORE
The ERISA Advisory Council has recommended that the Department of Labor (DOL) issue new guidance on ERISA bonding. The recommendation comes in a report to Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta that includes the council’s evaluation of the DOL’s regulations and guidance on ERISA bonding requirements...
READ MORE
The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has issued a comprehensive report on the regulatory agenda of the Department of Labor (DOL) for fall 2018. It includes proposed and final rules under consideration by the DOL’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) that would affect retirement...
READ MORE
ERISA was enacted to provide national protections for participants in employer-sponsored retirement plans – but proposed legislation would undermine those protections.
A bill introduced in the Senate in July would create a new type of “open” multiple employer plan (MEP), an employee benefit plan...
READ MORE
The practice of retiring and retirees receiving benefits in some fashion has only been around for a little over a century, right? Wrong! It’s been around for thousands of years.In “The History of Retirement,” SageView Advisory Group outlines when retirement, and associated payments, began and how...
READ MORE
Initially dismissed without prejudice, a suit that challenged a stable value provider of taking “hundreds of millions of dollars annually in undisclosed compensation” from retirement plans and participants has come up short.
Here Darlene Dezelan, a participant of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center...
READ MORE
Multiple employer plans (MEPs) continue to generate plenty of discussion.The reason is the Small Business Employees Retirement Enhancement Act, introduced earlier this month by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), which includes provisions regarding so-called “open” MEPs, a type of employee benefit plan that...
READ MORE
Having lost on claims of violating their fiduciary duty of prudence in failing to disclose sales practices that led to a drop in stock value in the firm’s 401(k) plan, plaintiffs got another shot regarding claims that Wells Fargo violated their duty of loyalty to plan participants.
The ruling comes...
READ MORE