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August 1, 2011 Get Health & Welfare News  |  Advertise  |  Unsubscribe  |  Past Issues  |  Search

Employee Benefits Jobs

Junior Plan Compliance Consultant
for Carpenter Morse Group in FL

Client Service Manager, Defined Benefit
for The Newport Group in WI

Contribution and Loan Processor (and possibly administrator)
for Retirement Planners & Administrators, Inc. in VA

Plan Relationship Manager
for PenServ Plan Services, Inc. in SC

Enrolled Actuary
for Consulting Actuaries Incorporated in NJ

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Webcasts and Conferences

Overview of the GASB’s New Pension Proposals Webcast
Nationwide on August 10, 2011 presented by Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB)


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[Guidance Overview]
File Your 2010 Form 5500 or Extension Request Today (August 1)
"An inadvertent failure to file or late filing of a Form 5500 when due may subject you, as a plan sponsor, to penalties of up to $25/day (with a maximum of $15,000 per return) from the IRS and up to $1,100/day from the DOL." (McKenna Long & Aldridge LLP)


Join our “In-service Distributions, Hardships and Loans” webinar   [Advert.]

Sponsored by ftwilliam.com

Join us August 4th and learn about in-service distribution, hardship and loan rules for defined contribution plans. We will also discuss plan design strategies and plan amendments to change in-service distributions rules. Click here to register.


[Guidance Overview]
Court Finds Plan Amendment not Adopted per Plan Rules Invalid
"A participant brought a class action lawsuit for fiduciary breach to recover losses suffered by the plan due to liquidation of the funds." (PLANSPONSOR.COM)

[Guidance Overview]
FASB Changes to GAAP Enhance Disclosures of Participation in Multiemployer Defined Benefit Pension Plans
"The new standard is expected to be finalized in September 2011. Once finalized, employers contributing to these plans will want to become familiar with the new requirements, gather data as it becomes available and prepare to enhance their reporting." (Proskauer Rose LLP)

Webinar Series on Social Media: A Retirement Tool for the 21st Century
"The goal of this webinar series is to provide participants, including older adults and their caregivers, women, members of the Aging Network, Older Americans Act service providers, and other professionals with information that will help to unravel the mystery of planning for the future by using social media as a tool to reach and maintain retirement goals." (WISER)

DOL to Shift Toward Stricter Enforcement of 403(b) Regs
"Brad Campbell, former head of the Employee Benefits Security Administration, told attendees at [a Washington, D.C., meeting] that plan sponsors don't have 'a whole lot longer to get our acts together before the enforcement starts becoming more pointed.'" (Employee Benefit News; free registration required)

Text of 'Pension Technical Modifications Act' (PDF)
"To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 to make technical modifications relating to the Worker, Retiree, and Employer Recovery Act of 2008 and the Preservation of Access to Care for Medicare Beneficiaries and Pension Relief Act of 2010." (via American Benefits Council)

DOL Proceeding with Plans to Expand Oversight of Retirement Plans Despite Wall Street Resistance
"[Assistant Labor Secretary Borzi said in an email] that it is 'hard to believe that a rule designed to protect employers and workers from conflicted investment advice would cause the entire financial industry to voluntarily walk away from a multitrillion-dollar market.'" (The Wall Street Journal)

Asset Allocation Models Are the Only Way Forward for 401k's
"[C]ost is the starting point of what has been deemed 'the equation for retirement success—cost, compounding and contribution—the 3 C's.' Cost should be low, so participants can keep as much money in their accounts as possible to grow for retirement." (Invest n Retire)

Illinois Ended Fiscal 2010 As the Most Broke State in the Nation
"[The governor] and the Legislature decided to make the state's contribution with cash for first time in two years, instead of adding to the $13 bil.lion the state owes in pension payment bonds." (Illinois Statehouse News)

Oklahoma Attorney General Launches Investigation Into Public Pension Fund Investments
"The investigation will include confirming that banks are following federal guidelines for currency trades for the state's pension funds and are not improperly manipulating foreign currency trade prices to maximize their own profits . . . ." (NewsOK.com)

Oregon Public Employees Retirement System Holds Earnings Rate Assumption at 8%
"The rate of 8%, which has been in place at OPERS since 1989, was voted on at the July 29, 2011 Board meeting. According to an announcement on OPERS web site, the Board also approved other demographic assumptions for the 2010 Experience Study presented by PERS' actuary, Mercer." (PLANSPONSOR.COM)

FBAR Filers May Use FinCEN's Electronic Filing System
"Parties filing a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR) may opt to use an electronic filing system developed by the US Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN)." (Mercer LLC)

Kraft Foods' Plan Administrators Might Have Violated ERISA
"The alleged failure of plan fiduciaries of the Kraft Foods Global Inc. 401(k) plan to change the plan structure to reduce participants' costs may have been a breach of their fiduciary duties. . . . The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the fiduciaries failed to act to address transactional drag and investment drag, and so may have acted unreasonably." (Society for Human Resource Management via CBS Interactive)

Catching Up After a Break in 401(k) Contributions
"In a new report, T. Rowe Price shows what happens when people take a time-out from retirement plan contributions—for reasons such as unemployment, child care or going back to school—and how they can undo the damage." (San Francisco Chronicle)

City of Memphis Gets Set to Look at Retirement System Changes
"The Wharton administration is about to propose changes in the Memphis city employee retirement system that are a) prudent moves designed to protect the integrity of the retirement fund or b) unnecessary reactions to a manufactured crisis." (The E.W. Scripps Co.)

Florida Sees Flood of New Public Retirees
"Likely at least in part in response to a new law that dramatically changed the state's retirement plan, requiring employee contributions for the first time in three decades, about 10,100 people chose to enter retirement or exited the state's deferred retirement plan in May, June and July, an increase of more than 900 people from the same time last year." (Sunshine State News)

Florida Public Pension Under Fire Again
"The State of Florida pension fund is under fire by the St. Petersburg Times. . . . Here is an editorial, Florida pension funds still cloaked in secrecy, [http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/article1183230.ece] and the dirty details, Easy investments beat state's expert pension planners [http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/article1183442.ece]." (Forbes.com LLC)

[Opinion]
California Teacher Pension System on Dangerous Path to Insolvency
"Under its current funding structure, the question is not whether the pension plan of the California State Teachers' Retirement System will go broke, but when. The system's latest estimate is about 2040." (Bay Area News Group)

Benefits in General; Executive Compensation

Say on Pay Makes Debut in 2011 Proxy Season
"[T]o date, less than 2% of say-on-pay proposals have failed. So what have we learned from the debut of say on pay?" (Cooley LLP)

IRS Semiannual Regulatory Agenda Includes Additional Guidance on Funding and Contribution Rules
"Among the items in the IRS's prerule rule stage are: Guidance relating to the determination of whether a plan is a governmental plan within the meaning of Code Sec. 414(d). Guidance on how to calculate the applicable premium under COBRA." (Wolters Kluwer Law & Business - CCH)

The Changing Prospects for Same-S.ex Marriage, and Its Impact on Employee Benefits (PDF)
"As more states move toward legalizing same-s.ex marriages (or providing marriage equivalents to same-s.ex couples), the workability and restrictions of DOMA require an increased awareness on the part of benefit plan administrators and fiduciaries." (Trucker Huss, APC)

Press Releases



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