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Regulatory Compliance
Some things are inexorable. Seasons. Tides. And, argues a recent blog entry, plan litigation. But as with natural phenomena whose effects can be mitigated, the analysis suggests that lessons from the litigation that has taken place can benefit 401(k) and 403(b) plan fiduciaries in 2019.
Litigation...
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The mid-terms are over and the Democrats are taking back control of the House for the first time since 2010, while the GOP slightly expanded its hold on the Senate majority. Believe it or not, while the talk outside the Beltway has largely focused on the prospects for even more gridlock, the...
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After a year-long investigation into MetLife for failing to make pension payments to retirees, Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin has announced terms of a settlement with the firm.
According to Galvin, his office has entered into a consent order, requiring MetLife to pay a fine of $1...
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A plan sponsor who had been sued for allegedly breaching its ERISA fiduciary duties in shifting allocations in a plan’s custom target-date portfolios to “risky and high-cost” investments will have to go back to court.
Suit ‘Able’
The original lawsuit, filed in November 2015 in the U.S. District...
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Bipartisan legislation to allow plan sponsors to use e-delivery as the default distribution method for ERISA required retirement plan documents was reintroduced in the Senate in the waning days of the 115th Congress.
The Receiving Electronic Statements to Improve Retiree Earnings (RETIRE) Act (S....
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In the waning days of the 115th Congress, the bipartisan duo of Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Ben Cardin (D-MD) unveiled one of the most comprehensive pieces of retirement security legislation proposed in this congressional session.
The 121-page “Retirement Security and Savings Act of 2018,” ...
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After “more than two years of litigation, multiple motions and the review of more than 100,000 pages of documents exchanged in discovery,” the plaintiffs and defendants in an excessive fee suit have come to terms.
The settlement (Schultz v. Edward D. Jones & Co., LP, E.D. Mo., No. 4:16-cv-...
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Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), Ranking Member of the Senate Finance Committee, has introduced legislation that would permit 401(k), 403(b) and SIMPLE retirement plans to make matching contributions to workers as if their student loan payments were salary reduction contributions.
Earlier this year the IRS...
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The participant-plaintiffs in a stock drop case have won a rare victory in federal court.
The plaintiffs alleged that the IBM defendants (IBM itself, along with the Retirement Plans Committee of IBM; Richard Carroll, IBM’s Chief Accounting Officer; Martin Schroeter, IBM’s CFO; and Richard Weber,...
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There are many challenges facing plan sponsors, and in a recent blog entry Christopher Carosa has identified the top challenges of which they are not aware.
Understanding the Extent of Legal Liability
“The eye cannot be on two balls at once,” writes Carosa, noting that most plan sponsors “stay...
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The on-cycle filing deadline for third cycle pre-approved defined contribution plans ends Dec. 31, 2018. The IRS issued a reminder about the upcoming deadline on Dec. 14.
The IRS encourages filers to red line all changes made since the pre-approved second cycle plan document.
The IRS also reminds...
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The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) has made its Comprehensive Premium Filing Instructions for 2019 Plan Years available.
The new instructions reflect the 2019 premium rates, as well as minor changes to reflect the PBGC’s streamlined disaster relief policy. They also provide...
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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...
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Employees increasingly are looking to their employers for help with managing their student loan debt, but there are several issues employers should consider in advance, according to industry experts.
In a new Employee Benefit Research Institute issue brief summarizing a web briefing — “Student...
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It’s always unpleasant when a TPA gets a call or a letter from the Department of Labor (DOL) about an investigation of a client’s qualified plan.
What should a TPA do? As a first step, a TPA should notify its client about the inquiry from the DOL, so that the client can, if desired, relay that...
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The American Retirement Association (ARA) in a Dec. 11 letter to Acting IRS Commissioner David Horton has made suggestions regarding the Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System (EPCRS). Namely, the ARA has suggested that the IRS provide additional examples of “significant” and “insignificant”...
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The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) on Dec. 12 issued a final rule amending its regulation on allocation of assets in single-employer plans by substituting a new table for determining expected retirement ages for participants in pension plans undergoing distress or involuntary...
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After seeing their earlier proposal come under attack, House Republican leaders have revised their end-of-year tax and retirement savings legislative package, and carried forward key provisions from the Retirement Enhancement and Savings Act (RESA).
Beyond that, the revised package seeks to...
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Dec. 31 is the deadline for most retirees who must make required minimum distributions (RMDs) from 401(k), 403(b) and 457(b) and other retirement plans and IRAs. The IRS has issued a reminder, which applies to many retirees born before July 1, 1948, regarding the looming deadline in IR-2018-248....
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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...
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