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Employee Benefits Jobs
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Webcasts and Conferences
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[Guidance Overview]
DOL Releases Final Regulations on DB Plan Funding Notices
"The most significant changes in the final regulations address 'material effect events' and delivery to all alternate payees. The exception for plans involved in a standard termination has been expanded. The regulations also include a model notice that has been slightly revised from the models in FAB 2009-01 and the 2010 proposed regulations."
(Towers Watson)
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[Advert.]
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Questions to Ask a Potential Plan Recordkeeper (PDF)
"In addition to asking the potential new recordkeeper to explain how it will address the problems that the plan is experiencing with the current provider, the plan sponsor should ask to be shown a comprehensive overview of the new recordkeeper's plan sponsor website so that it knows exactly what the screens will look like and what types of on-line reporting functions are available.... When evaluating a potential new recordkeeper, the plan administrator should ask for detailed responses to the following questions[.]"
(Retirement Management Services)
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Retirement Plans and Strategies for Small Business Owners and Self-Employed Entrepreneurs
"One of the greatest fears as a business owner or a self-employed entrepreneur is the inevitable time at which they will have to step away from everything they have created.... [T]here are quite a number of options for retirement plans, and most [business owners] are not even aware of most of the types of retirement accounts available. In this article, [the authors] discuss the various types of retirement plans and offer insights into a few strategies that are commonly used by small business owners and self-employed entrepreneurs."
(National Association for the Self-Employed [NASE])
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Plaintiffs Fail to Float Claim Past Federal District Court
"Unless Congress legislates new law, the [DOL] addresses the question raised by the courts, or the losing plaintiffs appeal to a higher court, it is looking like in most circumstances, float earnings are not considered plan assets.... At this point, a fiduciary must now determine whether it is important to continue the same governance activities of the past or abandon those activities as a waste of time. Of course, under the current short-term interest rate environment float earnings do not amount to much especially for small plans, so the question is where do we go from here?" [In re Fidelity ERISA Float Litig., No. 13-10222 (D. Mass. March 11, 2015)]
(Fiduciary Matters Blog)
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State Street Finds Pension Funds Willing to Increase Risk Profile
"[T]hree-quarters of [survey] respondents expect to increase their risk appetite. They will do that by 'making a major shift in allocations to less-familiar asset classes such as alternatives to drive growth and meet long-term liabilities.' And the funds will pursue that goal by placing 'big bets on alternatives,' a group of assets that includes hedge funds, private equity, direct loans, infrastructure and real estate."
(Financial Post)
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Retirement Assets Total $24.7 Trillion in Fourth Quarter 2014
"Total U.S. retirement assets were $24.7 trillion as of December 31, 2014, up 1.7 percent from $24.2 trillion on September 30, 2014, and up 6.0 percent from year-end 2013. Retirement assets accounted for 36 percent of all household financial assets in the United States at the end of the fourth quarter of 2014."
(Investment Company Institute [ICI])
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Kentucky Pension Obligation Bond Bill Fizzles Out as Legislative Session Ends
"A bill to help prop up the Kentucky Teachers' Retirement System with $3.3 billion in pension obligation bonds fell apart Wednesday after state lawmakers failed to sign off on the proposal before the legislative session ended. HB 4, which also called for phasing into the full actuarial required contribution rate, passed the House on Feb. 23 but met resistance in the Senate. State senators voted earlier this month to create a task force of legislators to study the funding level and benefits provided by the $18.1 billion Frankfort-based pension fund in lieu of a bond issuance."
(Pensions & Investments)
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[Opinion]
Are America's Pensions in Peril?
"[P]ension policy in the United States has failed millions of Americans struggling to save enough money and all these conservative think tanks are spreading dangerous myths telling us that DC plans 'offer cost stability for employers, transparency for taxpayers and portability for public employees.' The only transparency DC plans offer is that they will ensure more pension poverty down the road, less government revenue (because people with no retirement savings won't be buying as many goods and services), and higher social welfare costs to society due to higher health and mental illness costs."
(Pension Pulse)
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[Opinion]
Freezing of Public DB Plans Doesn't Mean Higher Taxes
"[T]he public-pension industry -- government unions and the various financial and actuarial consultants employed by pension-plan managers -- claims that 'transition costs' make switching employees to defined-contribution pensions prohibitively expensive. Fear of 'transition costs' has helped scuttle past reforms in Pennsylvania, as in other states.... [But] nothing requires a closed pension plan to pay off its unfunded liabilities rapidly, and there's no reason it should. Unfunded pension liabilities are debts of the government; employee contributions are not used to pay off these debts. Whether new hires are in a defined-contribution pension or the old defined-benefit plan, the size of the unfunded liability and the payer of that liability are the same."
(The Wall Street Journal; subscription may be required)
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[Opinion]
The Great Fiduciary Debate: Will U.S. Brokers Be Held to a Fiduciary Standard?
"[We] can't count on any regulatory changes actually coming into effect any time soon. What does this mean for plan fiduciaries? If they are following best practices, new rules will probably be a non-event because they will already be getting their investment advice from ERISA fiduciaries.... Plan committees don't need action by a government authority in order to hire these professional fiduciaries and protect themselves. If they all did so, this debate would be moot for 401(k) plans (IRAs may be a different story) because non-fiduciaries wouldn't be consulted."
(Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP)
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Benefits in General; Executive Compensation
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Balancing Compensation Costs (PDF)
"Employers tend to view pension and welfare plan benefits costs as added costs rather than as an integral part of an employee's commercial value. One consequence is a growing number of longer-service employees have little hope of meaningful pension benefits when they retire, so may cling to their jobs beyond productive years.... An employee not willing to accept Form W-2 wages that support his commercial value after his pension and welfare benefit costs will not remain with the employer if he finds other work that pays higher direct compensation wages that will be with reduced benefits unless his commercial value is greater to another employer."
(H.C. Foster & Company)
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Explaining Pay for Performance: An Inexact Science, for Now
"[C]ompany explanations of how pay is linked to performance vary widely -- when they're offered at all. While the prevalence of pay-for-performance discussions in proxy statements increased steadily since Dodd-Frank was enacted in 2010, it appears to have plateaued in the last year. Just over a quarter (27%) of Fortune 500 companies provided some type of pay-for-performance discussion in 2014, which was down slightly from the 28% of companies that included such a summary in 2013."
(Towers Watson)
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Recurring Proxy Statement Disclosure Issues: Performance Share Reporting
"Nearly every company in America is making at least some of its equity award performance-based. Many have done so for years. In addition to the Form 4 reporting, two other questions ... relating to the unique reporting status of performance shares (or units) are: ... [1] Reporting Performance-Based Awards that Vest on the Last day of the Fiscal Year ... [2] Reporting Performance-Based Awards in the Summary Compensation Table."
(Winston & Strawn LLP)
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Press Releases
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