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Lincoln Financial Group
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IRT Relationship Manager 3
Wells Fargo
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Paralegal - Compensation and Benefits
Ameriprise Financial
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Small Cleveland Actuarial/ERISA Consulting Firm
in OH

Client Service Manager
PEN-CAL Administrators
in CA

DC Plan Administrator
Actuarial Data Inc.
in PA

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PEN-CAL Administrators
in CA

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Growing Regional Certified Public Accounting Firm
in PA

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Long Island, NY-based TPA/Recordkeeper
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HIPAA-HITECH Risk Management BootCamp
July 15, 2014 in TN
(Clearwater Compliance)

What the New Healthcare Law Means for Your Small Business
July 17, 2014 WEBCAST
(Small Business Majority)

Fifth Third Bancorp v. Dudenhoeffer: Supreme Court Eschews Moench Presumption, Leaving the Future for Stock-Drop Litigation Under ERISA Unclear
July 28, 2014 WEBCAST
(Practising Law Institute)

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[Guidance Overview]

IRS Regulations Create New Type of Retirement Income Annuity
"You will be able to exclude the value of a [qualifying longevity annuity contract (QLAC)] from your RMD calculations, allowing you to keep a greater portion of your IRA (or other retirement account) intact longer. Payments from QLACs will have to begin no later than the first day of the month after you turn 85. You will be limited as to how much of your retirement savings you can invest in a QLAC.... The limits will apply separately to each spouse when each spouse has their own retirement accounts. QLACs cannot be variable or equity-indexed annuity contracts, though insurance may offer contracts with cost-of-living adjustments. QLACs cannot offer any cash surrender value." (The Slott Report)  

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Set Yourself Apart From Your Peers With the CEBS Designation

Co-sponsored by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, the CEBS designation gives you the knowledge and confidence to succeed in today's business environment. Learn More!

Annuities in U.S. Retirement Plans Get Government Boost
"The final rules, in a change from those proposed in 2012, allow for return of unused premiums as a death benefit. That change, sought by annuity insurers, will give people an option to get money to their spouses if they die before the annuity begins paying out. Annuities with that cash refund option offer lower guaranteed annual payments." (Bloomberg)  

Funded Status of U.S. Corporate Pensions Rises to 92 Percent
"The funded status of the typical U.S. corporate pension plan increased 1.4 percentage points in June 2014 to 92.0 percent, driven by rising asset values ... [A]ssets at the typical corporate plan rose 1.4 percent and liabilities decreased 0.2 percent during the month. Year to date, the funded status of corporate plans is down 3.2 percentage points[.]" (BNY Mellon)  

Supreme Court Rejects Presumption of Prudence for Stock Drop Cases
"Plan documents or fiduciary procedures that require an employer stock investment to be maintained unless the company is on the brink of collapse or facing some other dire circumstance will likely need to be revised.... As part of the context-specific inquiry demanded by the Court, a plan design that allows participants to freely choose whether or not to invest in employer stock may be more defensible as a prudent alternative despite the inevitable fluctuations in the stock's performance over time." (Jones Day)  

Some Additional Thoughts on Fifth Third Bancorp v. Dudenhoeffer
"[It] is important to understand that risk has not been created or destroyed by this decision. The risk was always present. Under Moench, ESOP participants bore most of the risk. But under this decision, ESOP fiduciaries will not bear most of the risk either. Instead, this case was all about shifting a portion of the risk back to ESOP fiduciaries rather than ESOP participants, but leaving it somewhere in the middle.... ESOP fiduciaries should consider treating their company stock investment with the same exacting fiduciary standards they are treating the plan's other investments.... Here are items they should consider[.]" (The Lowenbaum Partnership and FRA PlanTools)  

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401(k) Plan Duties and Liability Update: What You Need to Know and Do

July 9 live webinar. Are you prepared to handle your 401(k) plan duties? Stay on top of current regulatory, legislative and legal trends. BenefitsLink discount.

Lockheed Martin to Freeze DB Plan
"Lockheed noted its salaried pension plan was closed to new participants in 2006, though roughly 48,000 members of the company's 113,000 workforce still participate in the program. When the process is complete, most of Lockheed's salaried workers will have transitioned to the defined-contribution plan, which offers company contributions of as much as 10% of employees' salary a year." (The Wall Street Journal; subscription may be required)  

Offsetting the Income Taxes from an Inherited 401(k)
"The terms of the inherited retirement account specified that the couple had to draw it down in equal installments over five years.... That additional income meant they'd owe at least another $6,500 per year in taxes.... [Their advisor] suggested that each of them contribute the maximum $22,000 to their 401(k)s each year. Those combined tax-deferred contributions of $44,000 would offset the $40,000 in annual income from the inherited 401(k), reducing their tax bill and preventing them from moving into a higher tax bracket." (The Wall Street Journal; subscription may be required)  

Why It Rarely Pays to Wait on Taking Withdrawals from a Variable Annuity Guaranteed Living Withdrawal Benefit Rider
"While it seems that many retirees prefer to ... wait -- perhaps in no small part due to the confused belief that their cash value is guaranteed to grow at 5%/year, when in truth it's simply their benefit base against which withdrawals can be taken -- a deeper analysis reveals that in the end, most retirees with a [Guaranteed Living Withdrawal Benefit (GLWB)] rider may do little more than pay a lot in annuity costs to receive a guarantee to just spend their own original contributions and nothing more." (Michael Kitces in Nerd's Eye View)  

Target Date Funds Get Cheaper, Use Tactical Allocation Well
"'For the fifth year in a row since Morningstar's first annual target-date survey, the industry's average asset-weighted fee has come down. It stood at 0.84% at the end of 2013, down from 1.04% in 2008.... Morningstar's figures suggest that open-architecture funds on average provide a performance advantage before fees, but the higher costs needed to gain access to those strategies have generally negated those gains.... Combined with an additional $18 billion in new assets in 2014's first quarter plus market appreciation, target-date mutual funds now hold more than $650 billion in assets.'" (Morningstar)  

Be Cautious of Offers to Pass the Fiduciary Buck
"The most aggressive of these fiduciary service marketers propose to transfer all employer fiduciary risk to themselves by the delegation of certain functions that may include plan administration, investment management or a combination thereof.... The employer is ultimately responsible for the providers they appoint to fulfill these roles and has an ongoing obligation to monitor the actions of each provider. While use of experts to fulfill these roles is often a prudent course of action for the plan fiduciary, they must always remember that their fiduciary obligation doesn't end with this appointment." (Todd Berghuis, for Ascensus)  

Healthy, Wealthy, and Wise: Retirement Planning Predicts Employee Health Improvements
"[E]xisting retirement-contribution patterns and future health improvements were highly correlated. Employees who saved for the future by contributing to a 401(k) showed improvements in their abnormal blood-test results and health behaviors approximately 27% more often than noncontributors did." (Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis, via Psychological Science)  

Pension Finance Update as of June 30, 2014 (PDF)
"Pension sponsors got a boost in June, due to stock market gains and slightly higher interest rates, although both 'model' plans ... remain modestly underwater halfway through 2014....[T]raditional 'Plan A' gained 1% last month and is now down 4% during 2014, while the more conservative 'Plan B' is up fractionally in June and is down less than 2% on the year." (October Three Consulting)  

Default Rates on Leveraged ESOPs, 2009-2013 (PDF)
"Based on an analysis of 1,232 leveraged ESOP transactions at three large banks, 1.3% of ESOP companies in the sample defaulted on their loans in a way that imposed losses on their creditors for loans in effect between 2009 and 2013 (or an annual rate of 0.2%). The defaults accounted for 1.5% of the total value of the ESOP loan portfolio for these companies during this period." (National Center for Employee Ownership [NCEO])  

ESOP Companies and Fiduciaries Can Successfully Manage ESOP Risk
StockShield, Inc.

New Federal Rules Promote the Use of Longevity Annuities in 401(k)s and IRAs, Expanding Lifetime Income Options for Savers
American Council of Life Insurers

MassMutual Appoints National Practice Leader For Not-for-profit Retirement Plan Market
MassMutual

Cambridge Continues to Expand Retirement Center Offerings
Cambridge Investment Research, Inc.

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