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Employee Benefits Jobs
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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]
Your Retirement Plan Must Recognize Same-Sex Spouses: Timeline for Compliance
"Regardless of whether your plan needs to be amended, you should clarify administrative procedures according to a timeline that shows how your plan handled same-sex spouses before and after the Windsor ruling. The timeline should specifically address the period between June 26, 2013 (the date of the Windsor ruling) and September 16, 2013 (the effective date for the IRS recognition)."
(Bloomberg BNA)
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Second Circuit Tosses Stock Drop Claim Because Funding a Plan Is Not a Fiduciary Act
"[The court's] decision did rely on a view employee benefits practitioners have long held: the act of plan funding (the amount as well as the nature of payment) is not a fiduciary act. That's not to say that funding a plan with employer stock is free of risk after the Second Circuit ruling, but Coulter certainly gives the defense another tool to fight back against stock drop claims." [Coulter v. Morgan Stanley & Co., Nos. 13-2504-cv(L), 13-2509-cv(con) (2d Cir. May 29, 2014)]
(Seyfarth Shaw LLP)
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What to Do With 'Orphaned' 401(k)s
"The quickest, easiest way to locate an orphaned account is to call the human resources department at your former employer. They should be able to help you or direct you to the plan provider. For more difficult circumstances -- for example, that the company you worked for no longer exists, or you left many years ago and human resources cannot tell you where your account is held -- it could be difficult to track down your orphaned account. In that case, a government agency could help: the [PBGC]. This organization is designed to help find lost defined-benefit plans, commonly known as pensions, but it may be able to help find a 401(k) or similar defined-contribution plan. The National Registry of Unclaimed Retirement Benefits is another option to consider."
(U.S. News & World Report)
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Why Every 401(k) Fiduciary Should Redefine Risk as What Happens When You Miss Your Goal
"Volatility never cut it in terms of defining investor risk.... When volatility caused investors to miss their target, this was the realization of downside risk. When volatility caused investors to meet or exceed their target, this was the realization of upside potential.... To the extent 'risk' is meant to reflect an assessment of relative danger associated with undertaking a certain enterprise, then merely reducing it to the odds of missing your target understates its true significance."
(Fiduciary News)
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403(b) Plan Sponsors Move to Simplify Investment Choices
"403(b) plan sponsors offered an average of 26 investment options in 2013, down from 31 in 2012; edging closer to the average of 19 investment options in 401(k) plans. 403(b)s with the highest average participation rate (72.2 percent) are those with between 15 and 20 investment options.... Three quarters of 403(b) plans now offer target date investment options, a steady increase since 2009 when they were included in just over half of plans (51.2 percent)."
(Plan Sponsor Council of America [PSCA])
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Three Measurements to Increase 401(k) Plan Effectiveness
"Forty-six percent [of plan sponsors] said they do not measure how many of their employees will be financially prepared for retirement! This is a huge opportunity to increase 401(k) plan effectiveness. These companies know that 401(k)-type plans will be the primary form of retirement savings and income for many of their employees at retirement.... But nearly half don't know whether they're being successful."
(The Wells Fargo Blog)
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Fiduciary Committee Best Practices, Part 2: Preparing Meeting Minutes
"Well drafted minutes allow a committee to keep track of what it has done and make it more likely that decisions over time will be made in a consistent and rational manner, but they do more than that. Even if a plan fiduciary follows a prudent process in making a given decision (e.g., the selection of an investment fund), the fiduciary will not have a very strong defense against a breach of fiduciary duty claim unless it can demonstrate that the process actually took place. Minutes document the process for both internal and external audiences."
(Verrill Dana LLP)
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Many Americans Flying Solo When Investing for Retirement (PDF)
"New analysis of 13 million 401(k) investors reveals that across the country, 63% are taking a 'Do It Yourself' approach by assuming responsibility for their own investment decisions. What's concerning is the fact that more than half who are taking a 'Do It Yourself' approach are considered 'unengaged,' in that they have not made a fund exchange, updated how their contributions are invested, or sought guidance in at least two years."
(Fidelity Investments)
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Target Date Fund Disclosure: Are We Done Yet?
"[By] recently reopening its comment period, the SEC is asking for more input around target-date funds, specifically on whether or not to add some type of 'risk-based' designation to the required SEC disclosure. Following suit, the DOL also announced this month that it, too, will solicit comments prior to issuing final regulations.... [It] is not expected that final rules governing workplace target-date fund disclosure will be issued until 2015."
(Fidelity Investments)
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Day of Reckoning Looms for Canada's Public Pension Plans
"Public-service pension plans across Nova Scotia are underfunded and, in many cases, steps are not quickly being taken to fix them. The provincial Teachers' Pension Plan is only 75 per cent funded, with an unfunded liability of $1.5 billion. This is at a time when the number of new teachers is dropping, and soon half of the people in the plan will be retired."
(The Chronicle Herald)
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Teachers Want Choice of 403(b) Providers
"Over half of the workers in 55 studied school districts stopped contributing to 403(b) plans when their preferred provider was not available. Consolidation of providers in Colorado led more than 54 percent of participants to drop out of their retirement plans.... [One study] showed that teachers' savings rates nearly doubled as a result of receiving and implementing advice from an advisor of their choosing."
(SaveMy403b)
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[Opinion]
Text of Letter from American Benefits Council to Society of Actuaries regarding RP-2014 Mortality Tables (PDF)
"[T]here is a concern that too much data was disregarded in compiling these Exposure Drafts and the data not taken into account could well have made a material difference.... [T]he Improvement Scale is, by definition, speculative. In that context, there is concern that the language of Mortality Improvement Scale MP 2014 overemphasizes the use of the Society's projections and underemphasizes needed flexibility for actuaries to exercise their professional judgment regarding future mortality improvements."
(American Benefits Council)
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Benefits in General; Executive Compensation
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U.S. Workers Shy Away from Savings
"With personal incomes flat and GDP growth feeble, U.S. 401(k) participants expect to make lower retirement contributions in the coming year. Those aged 50 years and older anticipate significantly lower contributions than their 2012 forecast.... Saving for health care expenses in retirement has escalated as a major savings objective ... Of those 50 to 64 years old, 45% are now focused on saving for retirement health expenses, a 13-point increase over the prior year's survey."
(Mercer)
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Health Savings Accounts Can Double as Shadow IRAs
"The accounts work as supplements to your retirement package only if you have relatively few medical expenses that you need to pay out-of-pocket -- or if you can pay whatever medical expenses you do have from other sources, so that the HSA dollars stay in place and compound."
(The Wall Street Journal; subscription may be required)
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Preparing for IRS Section 409A Audits (PDF)
"[At] a minimum, companies should review the deferral elections of, and payments to, their top 10 highest compensated employees. Under the IRS correction program, certain types of operational failures, if corrected promptly, can be relatively easy to correct with few consequences. In addition, companies that last reviewed their plan documents in 2008 may consider taking a fresh look, particularly to ensure documentary compliance prior to an IRS audit. Importantly, once a company or an executive is under an IRS audit on these issues, the correction programs are no longer available."
(Groom Law Group)
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Press Releases
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