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Employee Benefits Jobs
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Webcasts and Conferences
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[Official Guidance]
Text of Disaster Relief Relating to PBGC Deadlines in Response to Severe Storms and Tornadoes in Oklahoma
"PBGC is waiving certain penalties and extending certain deadlines in response to the Severe Storms and Tornadoes that began on May 18, 2013, in Oklahoma.... The disaster area consists of Cleveland, Lincoln, McClain, Oklahoma and Pottawatomie counties. If IRS adds additional areas in connection with those filing extensions, any person responsible for meeting a PBGC deadline that is located in those additional areas will also be a Designated Person."
(Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation)
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For Performance, 401(k) Plans Can't Touch Pensions
"[C]ompanies are not so concerned about their employees' retirement funding that they'll contribute as much money to a defined-contribution (DC) plan, like a 401(k), as they did to their former defined-benefit (DB) pension plans.... While the value of most accounts has since recovered, a sense of trust in 401(k) plans likely has not, and there is great yearning within American society for the guaranteed monthly benefit for life that a pension plan brings."
(CFO.com)
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Madigan Pension Plan Could Save Illinois $187 Billion
"New estimates released Tuesday indicate House Speaker Michael Madigan's pension reform proposal would save more money over the next three decades than had been expected.... The proposal would require [Illinois] state workers to take more money out of their paycheck, increase retirement ages and scale back cost-of-living bumps. Senate President John Cullerton's spokeswoman ... maintained the savings would be zero when a court determines the Madigan plan is unconstitutional."
(Chicago Tribune; free registration required)
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403(b)s Becoming More Like 401(k)s -- With One Big Exception
"Although 401(k) participants are charged fees by the mutual funds they invest in as well as by the plan itself to cover expenses, 403(b) participants investing in annuities may pay plan fees, plus a fee that goes to the insurance salesperson selling the annuity. The sales agent's fee typically runs 1.25% per year. When compounded year after year, these high fees take a substantial bite out of a retirement saver's nest egg."
(Morningstar)
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401(k) Wellness Scorecard for First Quarter 2013 (PDF)
"[Results] from the first three months of 2013 show employees taking advantage of the tools they have at their disposal.... Tools such as automatic enrollment, age-based default investments and guidance are helping workers improve their financial wellness.... [A] company with a 401(k) plan may have lower costs for employee salaries than a company without one.... Workers planning for health care costs are increasingly applying the kind of experience, tools and resources they use to plan for retirement."
(Bank of America Merrill Lynch)
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FTSE100 DC Pensions: Average 10 Per Cent Employer Contribution, Most Charges Below 0.5 Per Cent
"FTSE100 companies with defined contribution [plans] are prepared to pay an average of 10 per cent of salary into employees' pensions ... In three quarters of [plans], Annual Management Charges (AMCs) are no more than 0.4 per cent of the member's account balance where they remain invested in the default option. Where companies automatically enroll staff into pension [plans], more than 90 per cent usually stay in. Some 27 per cent of companies surveyed have closed a defined benefit scheme to existing members as well as new entrants, up from 4 per cent in 2010."
(Towers Watson)
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Why It's Time to Retire the Idea of Retirement
"Nearly 3 in 4 boomers say they've been forced to rethink their retirement date. Of these, nearly 80 percent (or more than half of all middle-income boomers) said they would delay retirement -- by an average of five years -- and 14 percent said they feel they can never retire.... Asked what they expected their retirements to be like, boomers projected huge differences between their experiences and their perceptions of how previous generations had fared in retirement."
(U.S.News & World Report)
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How Important Is Medicare Eligibility in the Timing of Retirement? (PDF)
"[W]orkers without retiree health insurance -- those most affected by the availability of Medicare benefits -- are especially likely to retire in the month they turn 65. Their increased propensity to retire when they become eligible for Medicare in fact accounts for about 30 percent of the continuing spike in retirements at age 65, now that the Social Security [Full Retirement Age] has increased to age 66."
(Center for Retirement Research at Boston College)
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Framing Lifetime Income
"Life annuities are more attractive when presented in a consumption frame than in an investment frame. Highlighting the purchase price in the consumption frame does not alter this result. The level of habitual spending has little interaction with preferences for annuities in the consumption frame. In an investment frame, consumers prefer annuities with principal guarantees; this result is similar for guarantee amounts below, at, and above the purchase price."
(National Bureau of Economic Research; purchase required for full document)
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The Oldest Boomers: Healthy, Retiring Rapidly and Collecting Social Security
"More than half (52%) of oldest Boomers (and their spouses) have fully retired, up from 19% in 2007 and 45% in 2011. 86% of the oldest Boomers are currently collecting Social Security benefits -- of those, 43% started collecting earlier than expected.... The majority (82%) rate their health as good to excellent. They won't view themselves as 'old' until they reach the average age of 78.5."
(MetLife)
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Benefits in General; Executive Compensation
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IRS Makes Employee Classification More Confusing
"If you're still unclear on a worker's designation after a thorough analysis of all of his or her jobs, one question may help shed some light on the subject: Could the circumstances of the individual's work lend itself to an employee-employer relationship at all? Basically, this question forces you to look at whether any single aspect of the person's work arrangement could disqualify him or her as an [Independent Contractor]."
(HR Benefits Alert)
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2013 Proxy Vote Outcomes, Year to Date (PDF)
"Thus far, of the 806 Russell 3000 companies that have reported vote results on [management Say on Pay ('MSOP')] proposals, only 17 companies have failed to receive majority support.... Of the Russell 3000 companies that have reported vote results on their MSOP proposals, nearly 80% of these companies have received at least 90% shareholder support, while approximately 4.6 % of these companies received shareholder support ranging from 50% to 70%[.]"
(Meridian Compensation Partners, LLC)
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Press Releases
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David Rhett Baker, J.D., Editor and Publisher
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