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Well, it truly is a sad state of affairs when a plan sponsor needs to hire another vendor to provide monitoring of the services another vendor is being paid to do, just to ensure they are doing it, or doing it correctly. Seems to me that if that is the case, then the "marketplace" has failed to punish those vendors that don't live up to their obligations.

The person needs to tighten up the terms in my opinion. Can you even do a transfer from one plan to another for a terminee? I have always understood a transfer to be a plan administrator/trustee initiated movement of money. Most common example is you terminate an MP plan for example and you transfer all the money to the related 4k plan. In this case you aren't asking the people if you want the money moved you are simply moving it. How can you move a person's money to an unrelated plan without their permission? Once you have their permission isn't a type of distributions? if so, then it is a direct rollover not a transfer? I could be wrong on this but I have never seen something could be called a transfer from plan A to plan B that isn't related to distributed a terminated employee's account balance in all the decades I have been working in this field. It raises all kinds of questions. In the transfer used in the example above you have to keep all protected benefits so you would still have to offer J&S on the MP money. Is that true if you do a transfer to an unrelated plan? Who would accept an unrelated plan's restrictions like that? So is this person talking about a direct rollover or a plan to plan transfer the words matter?

This is quite common. As long as it is open to everyone with no restrictions or conditions there shouldn't be any problem. Pretty sure EEOC clarified long ago that the fact that the benefit declines with age, and eventually disappears at age 65, is not an ADEA problem.

Probably OK, so long as the eligible group passes coverage. How else would an early retirement window work?

If you’re interested in learning more, ASPPA’s Eastern Regional conference in Philadelphia next Thursday includes this workshop: Co-Fiduciary Liability with 3(16) Services and Their Implications Many third party administration firms now include as part of their service options taking on the role of ERISA 3(16) “Plan Administrator.” The decision to offer this service should include consideration of factors beyond the plan administrator duties themselves. Learn about the co-fiduciary issues, how the law is interpreted and ethical dilemmas that you could find yourself addressing. Attendees will understand: 3(16) service responsibilities; Co-fiduciary issues related to 3(16) services; and “Landmines” with respect to the service offering. Ilene H. Ferenczy is the presenter, and I am the moderator.

For one example of the kind of statute jpod and Mojo refer to, see section 106 of Pennsylvania's Banking Code of 1965 at page 14 in this linked-to .pdf. http://www.legis.state.pa.us/WU01/LI/LI/US/PDF/1965/0/0356..PDF With the exception MoJo describes, the statute makes it unlawful for a corporation to act as a fiduciary unless it is a licensed bank or trust company (or is a nonprofit corporation and administers trusts related to the corporation's charitable or similar tax-exempt purposes).

To be a qualified plan under IRC Section 401(a), the trust must be a valid trust under the law of the State where the trust has its situs. It has always has been a concern that if the trust is an entity that does not have trust powers under local law you are at risk for blowing 401(a) status.