"Two recent cases -- one settlement agreement and one participant-initiated lawsuit -- have brought into question how participant data collected by a plan's third party recordkeeper can and should be used for non-plan purposes.... [T]here are several threshold matters that must be decided and analyzed by the courts as lawsuits like these move forward.... Prudent plan sponsors and employers should ... review existing service agreements and engage in open dialogues with third-party recordkeepers and administrators to understand what types of data are collected and retained by such vendors, and what those vendors are able to do with such data."

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