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Employee Benefits Jobs
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Webcasts and Conferences
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Despite Record-High 401(k) Plan Balances, Few Workers Actively Manage Their Portfolios
"Only 15 percent of workers rebalanced their portfolio in 2014 -- making it one of the lowest trading years on record. Even when eliminating the participants who are fully invested in target-date funds or other premixed portfolio options -- which do not require rebalancing -- only 19 percent of workers rebalanced their portfolio.... [On] average, workers were invested in just 3.6 different funds, down from 3.7 in 2013 and 3.9 funds in 2012."
(Aon Hewitt)
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Next Steps for ERISA Investment Fiduciaries in Light of Tibble
"[1] Think twice (or maybe more) about selecting or retaining a retail class or other higher fee fund, when the same fund is available in an institutional or lower fee class.... [2] If you do not have an investment committee for your 401(k) plan or an investment policy statement ... establish such a committee and adopt such a policy as soon as possible.... [3] Consider engaging a professional investment advisor to advise you or the investment committee on performance and fees.... [4] Consider engaging a qualified ERISA attorney to advise you or the committee on your or its fiduciary obligations and opportunities.... [5] Consider separating investment advice to the plan from investment advice to plan participants."
(Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi PC)
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Uncertainty Surrounds the Precise Scope of Duty to Monitor Plan Investments
"[It] is one thing to require fiduciaries to monitor whether a plan offers a mutual fund at the lowest cost available for that particular fund. It is quite another undertaking, however, to require fiduciaries to monitor the market on an ongoing basis to determine whether some non-identical but comparable fund might be available for an even lower price. Where the duty to monitor falls along this spectrum will doubtless become the subject of future litigation."
(Morgan Lewis)
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Fiduciary Rule Increases Cost and Oversight, Not Consumer Protection
" 'The DOL's proposal goes far beyond [putting your customer first] standard to limit choice and raise costs, unnecessarily so in our opinion,' said Ken Bentsen, president and CEO [of SIFMA] ... He contended that the DOL proposal implies that 'we are headed in a direction of bifurcated rules, compliance and disclosure regimes imposed on the same market participants from different regulators.' ... Mark Smith, a lawyer at Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan, noted that ... while the administration talks about a simple contract dealing with 'best interest,' it took the administration more than 400 pages to get its point across, meaning that the proposal is far more complex than the administration says it is."
(InsuranceNewsNet.com)
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FINRA Chief Blasts Labor Proposal for Stricter Broker Rules
"[FINRA] Chief Executive Officer Richard Ketchum said that the Labor Department's April proposal would create new legal risks for brokers and probably reduce the number of investment options they would offer. The remarks echo the lobbying talking points used by financial companies opposed to the proposal."
(Bloomberg)
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[Advert.]
2015 SPARK National Conference -- June 7-9, Washington DC
The retirement services industry's leading event for top marketing, sales, administration and record keeping professionals. Comprehensive agenda is designed to meet the needs of 401(k) Plan Providers, Financial Advisors and Third Party Administrators.
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Time for Target Date 2.0: Five Key Areas Where Target Date Funds Should Evolve
"[1] Moving from a single investment manager format to a multi-manager or open-architecture format ... [2] Diversifying the underlying investment ... to also incorporate nontraditional asset classes ... [3] Providing more flexibility to respond to short-term market fluctuations ... [4] Mixing active and passive investing strategies ... [5] Calibrating the glide path to deliver better results in the distribution phase of a retirement plan[.] "
(AllianceBernstein L.P.)
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2015 Defined Contribution Trends (PDF)
"About one in 10 plan sponsors replaced their target date fund/balanced fund manager in 2014. The proportion of plans that offer their recordkeeper's proprietary TDF declined precipitously, from 47.5% in 2013 to 28.7% in 2014.... The most important step that plan sponsors took within the past 12 months to improve the fiduciary positioning of their DC plan was to review plan fees. However, fewer plan sponsors calculated or benchmarked plan fees in 2014 than in 2013, and fewer reduced plan fees after conducting a fee evaluation."
(Callan Associates)
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Inspiring a World of Habitual Savers (PDF)
60 pages. "Changing the design of workplace retirement plans is crucial. By including features such as automatic enrollment and automatic escalation, employers already play a large role in some countries... Reforms to employer retirement plans and labor laws can ... remove obstacles to people working longer. These reforms at a minimum should include incentives for participation in employer retirement plans, facilitating better decision-making through access to advice, information and guidance, as well as workplace changes to permit people to continue to work productively past normal retirement age."
(Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies)
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Cognitive Decline Adds to Case for DC Plan Auto-Features
"There is a wave of baby boomers now starting to retire, among whom are the first major cohort to face retirement relying primarily on DC assets. This group is on its own to turn an account balance into retirement income for life. So it is not good news that they're going to become less well-equipped to do this over time.... [P]art of the answer may lie in auto-features."
(Russell Investments)
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Examining the New Income Measures in the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey
"Compared with the estimated amount of income under the traditional income questions for 2013, the redesigned questions resulted in an estimated total annual income 9.1 percent larger for those ages 65 or older, an aggregate amount of almost an additional $133 billion. Furthermore, annual retirement income was 27.9 percent larger, an aggregate difference of almost $71 billion annually. Income from IRAs and 401(k)-type plans was an important component of this higher amount of annual retirement income found in the new questions, which overall was more than 250 percent higher than that found by the traditional measure."
(Employee Benefit Research Institute [EBRI])
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Benefits in General; Executive Compensation
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Ethical Considerations for Employee Benefits Attorneys (PDF)
146-page text outline of presentation to the Employee Benefits Institute Workshop, University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Law. Topics include: [1] Who is the client? [2] Representing entities; [3] Representing multiple parties; [4] Attorney-client privilege; [5] Work product doctrine; [6] Handling settlement proceeds subject to subrogation claim; [7] Plan participants' ability to sue law firm for legal malpractice; [8] Law firm as fiduciary of client's plan; [9] Multijurisdictional Practice; and [10] Circular 230 Revisions.
(Utz & Lattan, LLC)
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Press Releases
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Additional useful links:
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David Rhett Baker, J.D., Editor and Publisher
Holly Horton, Business Manager
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