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Employee Benefits Jobs
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Webcasts and Conferences
Employer Mandate Delay: Overview of New Final Regulations
February 19, 2014 WEBCAST
(Hill, Chesson & Woody)
ACA Employer Mandate Delay Provides Some Relief, but Challenges Remain
February 21, 2014 WEBCAST
(Mercer)
The Final 4980H Regulations: Complying with the ACAÂs Employer Shared Responsibility Rules
February 27, 2014 WEBCAST
(Bloomberg BNA)
Take Charge of Your Financial Future
February 28, 2014 WEBCAST
(Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), U.S. Department of Labor)
Tracking Full-Time Employees for Employer Play or Pay: Look-Back Measurement Under Final IRS Regulations
March 6, 2014 WEBCAST
(Thomson Reuters / EBIA)
Retirement Plan Insights Seminar
May 6, 2014 in PA
(McKay Hochman Co., Inc.)
View All Webcasts and Conferences
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Hand-picked links to the web's best news articles,
official guidance, jobs, webcasts and more.
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[Guidance Overview]
Compliance with DOL Disclosure Regs and Regular Monitoring Can Stop Fee Litigation (PDF)
"[P]laintiffs have argued that even if the overall fee is in line with industry averages, the fiduciaries breached their duty if they did not get a breakdown of the portion of the attributable to each service.... Plaintiffs have also alleged that fiduciaries were asleep at the switch when competitive bids were not periodically obtained and/or fees increased substantially as the value of plan assets rose with no corresponding increase in service.... [T]he key to avoiding fee litigation is likely to be compliance with the DOL's regulations regarding disclosure coupled with a prudent process for evaluating fees."
(Alston & Bird, LLP, via Bloomberg BNA)
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Companies Brace for 1-2 Retirement Punch from Budget Plan, Expected Legislation
"Like his 2014 budget, Mr. Obama's 2015 version is likely to limit the value of all tax deductions, defined contribution exclusions and IRA deductions to 28% of income -- and include an overall cap on all retirement accounts, including pensions, that could bring in $1 billion per year in new tax revenue.... The more immediate concern in Congress is how to pay for some of the pressing big-ticket items like unemployment insurance and Medicare fixes, and politically attractive moves like repealing military pension cuts. As Congress takes up those issues, the trick is providing 'pay-fors' to offset their price tags. That's what really has retirement experts on guard."
(Pensions & Investments)
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Trusteed IRAs Have Significant Advantages Over a 'Custodial' IRA, But They Come at a Cost
"The most obvious advantage of the trusteed IRA is the ability to control beneficiaries' access to the account after the IRA owner's death without the worries of trying to name a 'see-through trust' as beneficiary of the IRA. A trusteed IRA is itself a trust; therefore it can restrict beneficiaries' access to the funds even after the owner's death, provided the beneficiary receives the minimum distribution each year."
(Natalie Choate in Morningstar Advisor)
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Who's Training Your Retirement Navigator?
"Try getting objective advice about taking out money during retirement. Everyone has a vested interest. Brokerages, mutual-fund managers and insurance companies all earn fees on the investments they promote to retirees.... It is vital to understand a financial adviser's potential conflicts of interest. Investors often ask how much their advisers are getting paid for selling specific products. It also is important to know who educated them in the complexities of retirement planning -- something few investors think to ask."
(The Wall Street Journal; subscription may be required)
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Companies from Facebook to JPMorgan Squeeze 401(k) Plans
"The most frugal have been scaling back company matches and setting lower limits for the maximum annual payment they'll make to a 401(k) account ... A difference of three percentage points on a match can add up to hundreds of thousands of dollars lost for employees over the course of their careers.... Companies ... say their 401(k) policies are partially dictated by bottom-line considerations and marketplace competition. Others say that when setting their 401(k) contributions, they consider a wide range of benefits and their costs as well as employee preferences, including health care, vacation policy and incentives such as performance bonuses, stock options and outright grants."
(Bloomberg)
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Multinationals Close the Door on DB Plans as Deficits Become Unmanageable
"The death of defined benefit (DB) pension arrangements has become a global phenomenon with employers grappling with what to replace it with ... PwC surveyed 114 Fortune 500 global multinationals, which together employ 4.7 million people and have combined pension liabilities of $950 billion, and found that only 6% wish to perpetuate DB arrangements, where the employer underwrites the costs and risks of providing workers with guaranteed pension incomes. Nine in ten are actively deploying defined contribution (DC) as their predominant workplace retirement provision, with the commensurate transfer in cost and risk from employer to employees."
(PricewaterhouseCoopers)
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Putting Your 401(k) on Autopilot
"As policy makers continue to debate Americans' retirement readiness -- or unreadiness, as the case may be -- Vanguard and other 401(k) providers have been busy devising ways to coax, nudge and, in some cases, shove workers into joining their plans, raising their savings rates and making better investment choices. Increasingly they are finding it isn't enough to hand employees an information packet and send them on their way.... 'The 401(k) industry spends over $1 billion a year on employee education, and they have not been able to move the dial at all,' says Greg Kasten, founder of Lexington, Ky.-based Unified Trust[.]"
(The Wall Street Journal; subscription may be required)
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Details from Proposed Deal in Rhode Island Pension Case
"The state's pension bills would increase by $13 million to a total of $293 million starting in 2015 to pay for some of the changes ... The settlement would give cost-of-living increases to retired government workers sooner than the current law would allow.... Public workers would contribute more of the cost of their own retirement benefits.... Employees with 20 or more years of service can keep their existing pension plan instead of receiving a hybrid plan that combines a pension with a 401(k)-type account. All other workers would receive the hybrid, though governments would contribute slightly more to the 401(k)-like accounts of workers with 10 to 20 years of service."
(ABC News)
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[Opinion]
Rhode Island Settlement and Shifty Actuarials
"How do we know that these billions of dollars in savings will materialize and Rhode Island pensions will be saved? Because some actuaries said so in a report using methods consistent with industry standards including the three big lies of public pension actuarial prognostication: [1] We will get to 100% funding ... [2] One interest rate in perpetuity is fine ... [3] Being a member of the American Academy of Actuaries means something for public pension funding[.]"
(Burypensions)
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Press Releases
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