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Manager - Retirement Plan Compliance Testing
AIG Life & Retirement
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Final IRS Regulations on Employer Play or Pay: Health Care Reform’s Shared Responsibility Provision
March 20, 2014 WEBCAST
(Thomson Reuters / EBIA)

Healthcare Reform: Am I a Large Employer? - Recorded
April 7, 2014 WEBCAST
(International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans)

Impact of the New HIPAA HITECH Regulations - Recorded
April 8, 2014 WEBCAST
(International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans)

The Advantages of Value-Based Prescription Drug Benefit Design for Chronic Conditions
April 23, 2014 WEBCAST
(University Conference Services)

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[Guidance Overview]

DOL Continues Focus on Fiduciary Responsibility to Review Retirement Plan Fees, Aims to Simplify Review Process
"[T]he key elements required to be pinpointed in the guide represent the information that the DOL believes is critical in evaluating whether compensation paid to a service provider is reasonable. Plan fiduciaries should, therefore, be sure to review each of these elements as they evaluate their service providers' fees." (Calfee Halter & Griswold LLP, via Mondaq; free registration may be required)  

[Advert.]

Celebrate National Employee Benefits Day on April 2

Motivate your employees to make retirement planning a priority! The International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans has helpful resources, interactive worksheets and useful tools to get your employees thinking about their future. Learn More.

[Guidance Overview]

2014 Compliance Checklist for ERISA-Covered DB, DC and 403(b) Plans (PDF)
44 pages. Excerpt: "The Compliance Checklist incorporates defined benefit (DB), defined contribution (DC) and ERISA 403(b) requirements and provides information on the materials that you will need to file, filing due dates and agencies to which the filings should be made." (Prudential)  

[Guidance Overview]

2014 Compliance Checklist for Non-ERISA Plans (PDF)
20 pages. Excerpt: "The Compliance Checklist incorporates requirements for governmental and nonelecting church plans, non-ERISA 403(b) plans, 457 plans, and nonqualified executive benefit plans, and provides information on the materials that you will need to file, filing due dates, and agencies to which the filings should be made." (Prudential)  

[Guidance Overview]

Rehired Employees: When Do They Enter the Plan?
"What if an employee did not complete the eligibility conditions during his/her first term of employment? Do the rehired employee rules have any application? The correct response is that the rehired employee rules continue to have application. The plan, of course, does not need to make the employee a participant immediately but it cannot treat the employee as a new employee with a new employment commencement date from which to count eligibility service. Unless the prior service is disregarded under a break-in-service rule (rare), the plan must count service based on the anniversary of the original employment commencement date or on the basis of the plan year if the plan shifts to the plan year. Since most plans shift, the measuring period likely will be the plan year." (SunGard Relius)  

[Guidance Overview]

Excluding Part-time, Temporary and Seasonal Employees
"[A] plan may exclude part-time employees as long as the employer designs the provision in such a way that there is no possibility of indirectly imposing an hour of service requirement in excess of the Code Section 410(a)(1) statutory maximum.... Generally, a plan provision that excludes an employee who 'is scheduled' to work less than 1,000 hours of service is impermissible because the employee could work more than 1,000 hours but still be excluded." (SunGard Relius)  

[Advert.]

Meeting Your Fiduciary Responsibilities Under ERISA -- April 9 webinar

The webinar will cover practical strategies to avoid fiduciary status where advisable, satisfy your fiduciary duties when necessary and appropriate, and guard yourself from exposure to liability for alleged breaches. Special BenefitsLink discount.

DOL and SEC: Don't Be Intimidated
"[Both the DOL and SEC] have been dragging their feet in developing [fiduciary] standards, perhaps reflecting the intense opposition to such rules from the brokerage industry.... Now it seems that investors might have to wait a while longer.... [T]he DOL might not meet its self-imposed August deadline. The SEC staff, meanwhile, which supposedly had been preparing a cost-benefit analysis of a uniform fiduciary standard, has now been directed to prepare a new document that would outline the commission's options for such a rule." (InvestmentNews)  

Eighth Circuit Issues Widely Anticipated Excessive Fee Decision in Tussey v. ABB
"The Eighth Circuit upheld the $13.4 million decision against ABB regarding recordkeeping fees paid to Fidelity, but reversed and remanded the $21.8 million award based on losses due to mapping from the Vanguard fund to Fidelity's funds. The Eighth Circuit also reversed the $1.7 million based on float income." [Tussey v. ABB, Inc., No. 12-2056 (8th Cir. Mar. 19, 2014)] (Practical Law Company)  

Two Takeaways from Fidelity's Court Battle
"While plan sponsors may not be in the position to adequately manage a retirement plan on top of their other executive responsibilities, investment advisors are in a role that can be critical to keeping the plan sponsor on track. Whether advisors hire a 3(16) to act on behalf of the plan sponsor, or simply ensure that vendor value and compensation reviews are occurring on an annual basis, they can impact the effectiveness of their plan sponsor clients and help safeguard against fiduciary violations." (Roland|Criss)  

DOL's Retirement Policy Agenda for 2014: What Plan Sponsors Need to Know (PDF)
15 presentation slides. Topics include: [1] 408(b)(2) Round Two: Proposed Guide Requirement for Lengthy or Multiple Document Disclosures; [2] Brokerage Windows: DOL is Opening a New Regulatory Project -- Why, and What Might They Do? [3] Lifetime Income Projection: "Pre-Rule" Becomes Proposal -- Issues are Mandate and Methodology; [4] Annuity Selection Safe Harbor: DOL Likely to Address Safe Harbor Compliance Standards; [5] Fiduciary Advice/IRA Regulation: The Political Picture is Changing as SEC Slow-walks, DOL Lobbies, and FINRA Advances on IRAs. Where are we? [6] Target Date Disclosure: ERISA Disclosures vs. SEC. (Drinker Biddle & Reath, via American Benefits Council)  

Sinkhole of Bureaucracy: Federal Employee Retirements Are All Processed by Hand
"Here, inside the caverns of an old Pennsylvania limestone mine, there are 600 employees of the Office of Personnel Management. Their task is nothing top-secret. It is to process the retirement papers of the government's own workers. But that system has a spectacular flaw. It still must be done entirely by hand, and almost entirely on paper. The employees here pass thousands of case files from cavern to cavern and then key in retirees' personal data, one line at a time.... The staff working in the mine has increased by at least 200 people in the past five years. And the cost of processing each claim has increased from $82 to $108, as total spending on the retirement system reached $55.8 million." (The Washington Post; subscription may be required)  

2014 Guide to Retirement
"Key trends and themes include: [1] Americans need to plan for living longer. [2] More Boomers want to continue working, but will they be able to? [3] Inflation impacts retirees more than younger workers. [4] When does dollar cost averaging become dollar cost ravaging?" (J.P. Morgan)  

President's FY 2015 Budget Proposal Would Limit Retirement Tax Deductions, Allow PBGC to Set Risk Adjusted Premiums
"The budget request retains a proposal from last year's request that would limit the rate at which deductions and exclusions related to retirement saving reduce a taxpayer's income tax liability to 28%.... The budget request also contains proposals to establish automatic IRAs and to increase the tax credit for small employer plan start-up costs, proposals similar to those contained in earlier budget requests." (Wolters Kluwer Law & Business)  

A Pension Fund Invests Against the Rules, and Wins
"[The Tampa firefighters and police officers pension fund] pretty much breaks all the conventional rules of fund management. But then there are the numbers .... Over the last 20 years, the Tampa fund has generated an average annualized return of 9.88 percent as of last Sept. 30, which puts it in the top 1 percent of public pension plans with assets of more than $1 billion ... The fund's 10-year annualized return (9.72 percent) and 25-year return (10.48 percent) also rank in the top percentile." (The New York Times; subscription may be required)  

CalSTRS Rate Hike: A Start, Full Phase-In or Delay?
"Legislators were told last week an additional $181.7 billion would be needed for full funding in 20 years. If payments are spread out to ease the budget bite, the additional amount needed to reach full funding in 60 years is a staggering $618 billion. The point made by comparing the large numbers: Delaying a funding increase drives up the total cost, not to mention forcing future generations to pay for the services of workers received by the current generation." (Calpensions)  

U.S. Retirement System Ranks 19th Worldwide
"This year, the U.S. -- sixth highest in per capita income -- finished a relatively low 19th, behind several European nations, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Korea. The U.S. was ahead of Israel. The survey also found New Zealand, Iceland and South Korea improved the most in the last year." (InsuranceNewsNet.com)  

[Opinion]

Military Retirement System Is Too Costly -- and Inequitable
"The government spent $143 billion on military health and retirement in fiscal year 2013 -- significantly more than the $110 billion spent on weapons procurement that year.... The Defense Department in March released informal recommendations to overhaul the military's pension system. Though the proposals didn't make it into the Obama administration's 2015 budget, the report begins a conversation on how to fix the flawed way the U.S. offers benefits to members of the armed services." (The Wall Street Journal; subscription may be required)  

NAGDCA 2014 Annual Conference Committee Call for Speakers
NAGDCA (National Association of Government Defined Contribution Administrators, Inc.)

BNY Mellon Named Custodian by City of Phoenix Employees' Retirement System for $2 Billion in Plan Assets
BNY Mellon

Lincoln Financial Distributors’ Intermediary Retirement Plan Team Adds Two Regional Sales Directors
Lincoln Financial Group

Towers Watson Launches Turnkey Retiree Medical Exit Solution
Towers Watson

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