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16th Annual Employee Health Care Conference - The Changing Health Care Agenda: Pace, Process, Performance
March 10, 2016 WEBCAST
(Conference Board, The)

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Today's Discussions on the BenefitsLink Message Boards

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[Guidance Overview]

Sen. Hatch's Puerto Rico Bill Would Make Changes to State and Local Governmental Pension Plans (PDF)
"[T]he Puerto Rico Assistance Act of 2015 (S. 2381) ... includes the Public Employee Pension Transparency Act (H.R. 1628, PEPTA), which would impose new disclosure obligations on state and local governmental plan sponsors. It also includes a portion of Senator Hatch's Secure Annuities for Employees (SAFE) Retirement Act (S.1270) that would create a new type of plan design for state and local government retirement systems. One reason the pension provisions may have been added is that Puerto Rico's debt crisis has been exacerbated by severely underfunded plans for Puerto Rico public employees." (Groom Law Group)  

[Advert.]

Advisors: Attend NAPA's 2016 401(k) Summit, April 17-19 in Nashville

Register for NAPA's 2016 401(k) Summit – the event Plan Advisors won't want to miss! Enjoy networking with other financial advisors and TPAs while earning up to 14 hours of NAPA/ASPPA CE credits from innovative sessions on the topics that matter most to YOU.

Court Awards $11.7 Million in Attorneys' Fees in Fund Mapping Case (Tussey v. ABB)
"The court ... awarded class counsel $11.7 million in attorneys' fees and affirmed its earlier award of $2.28 million in costs and class representative awards. The court explained that the defendant, in its view, 'was not merely negligent but rather motivated by self-interest,' and the case made a 'significant, national contribution' towards educating 'plan administrators, the Department of Labor, the courts and retirement plan participants about the importance of monitoring recordkeeping fees and separating a fiduciary's corporate interest from its fiduciary obligations.' " [Tussey v. ABB, No. 2:06-cv-04305-NKL (W.D. Mo. Dec. 9, 2015)] (Proskauer's ERISA Practice Center)  

Pension Benefits Considerations for Multinational Companies: Cross-Border Issues in the Global Economy (PPT)
39 PowerPoint presentation slides, with commentary. "Employers operating in this environment must consider which benefit plans and programs will cover transferred employees, as well the impact their participation will have on the tax qualification of those plans.... [The presentation covers] certain problems encountered by U.S.-based multinationals that send their workers abroad, such as the structure and funding of their plans, as well as the U.S. taxation of their participants ... [and] consider[s] the problems of foreign multinationals operating in the U.S." (The Wagner Law Group)  

Impact of Higher Interest Rates on Your 401(k) Plan and Participants
"Nearly all 401(k) participants are long-term investors who should not be worried about daily, monthly or even annual fluctuations in the markets. Volatile times and periods of significant market stress do not last forever.... It is usually best for participants to stick with their savings and investment plan during periods of market change." (Lawton Retirement Plan Consultants)  

Top Areas of Focus in 2016 for Defined Benefit Plans
"DB plan sponsors [should] consider the following actions in 2016 ... Prepare for opportunities ... Evaluate funding ... Develop a glidepath ... Increase growth allocations ... Isolate interest rate risk ... Plan for liquidity ... Design the investment end state." (Mercer)  

[Advert.]

A creative co-op to elevate the conversation about why we're here.

Committed To Outcomes (C2O) is a work group and creative co-op dedicated to sharing original content that underscores the retirement industry's commitment to helping others succeed. Learn more.

New Opportunities for U.S. Life Insurers on Pension Risk Transfer (PDF)
14 pages. "This paper examines the current defined benefit pension risk transfer market and offers potential new solutions for companies to consider. Specifically, [the authors] discuss: [1] How a separate account pension risk transfer product can be used to provide a structure for transferring pension risk while providing credit protection and maintaining control over investment strategies. [2] U.S. life insurance regulations that set risk-based capital levels, and the compatibility of these regulations with the need to assess total asset requirements for pension liabilities and ensure that the liabilities are sufficiently funded. [3] A case study that lays out the risk and reward drivers of a representative pension risk transfer transaction and illustrates how investment strategies and mortality underwriting affect deal economics." (Milliman)  

Rhode Island Pension Fund Sharply Lags Expectations Again
"Despite the state's hard fought pension overhaul, Rhode Island taxpayers still face more than $400 million in annual costs for state-employee and public-school teacher pensions, at a time when the state is not even close to meeting its 7.5-percent assumed rate of return on its investments. As of Wednesday, the calendar year-to-date return on the $7.63 billion state-run pension fund was 0.88 percent, according to the state treasurer's office. By way of comparison: the pension fund stood at $8.06 billion a year ago." (Providence Journal)  

CBO's 2015 Long-Term Projections for Social Security: Additional Information
"This report presents additional information about CBO's long-term projections for Social Security in the form of 15 exhibits that illustrate the program's finances and the distribution of benefits paid to and payroll taxes collected from various groups of people. Any harm that rising debt would cause to the economy was not factored into the long-term projections published in this report. The appendix presents more information on CBO's demographic projections. A list of definitions of common terms appears at the end of the publication." (Congressional Budget Office [CBO])  

Massive Spending Bill Fails to Stop DOL Fiduciary Rule, Clearing Major Hurdle
"In a victory for proponents of the DOL rule, legislators' policy riders that would have either prevented or delayed promulgation of the regulation did not make it into the must-pass measure.... The rule still faces resistance in Congress. A bipartisan group of lawmakers said they will soon introduce a bill to replace the rule with what they call a better approach to ensuring financial advisers act in the best interests of their clients." (InvestmentNews)  

[Opinion]

Labor Department's Common Sense Fiduciary Rule Survives the House of Representatives
"This rule would seem to be a no-brainer, but the industry makes billions of dollars from conflicted advice, and it's used to getting its way. So the outcome of its efforts to kill the fiduciary rule was uncertain until [December 15], when it was revealed that an amendment to block the fiduciary rule was left out of the House omnibus appropriations bill. In essence, the opponents of the fiduciary rule want to preserve a system that allows financial advisers to give their clients advice that is in the adviser's interest rather than the client's." (Economic Policy Institute)  

[Official Guidance]

Text of IRS Notice 2016-01: Standard Mileage Rates (PDF)
"The standard mileage rate for transportation or travel expenses is 54 cents per mile for all miles of business use (business standard mileage rate).... The standard mileage rate is 14 cents per mile for use of an automobile in rendering gratuitous services to a charitable organization under Section 170.... The standard mileage rate is 19 cents per mile for use of an automobile [1] for medical care described in Section 213, or [2] as part of a move for which the expenses are deductible under Section 217." (Internal Revenue Service [IRS])  

[Guidance Overview]

2015 Q&As: EEOC Meeting with ABA Joint Committee on Employee Benefits, May 7, 2015 (PDF)
4 pages. Includes questions on ADA and exclusion of prescription drugs from a group health plan's formulary; wellness plan design; ADA and GINA issues relating to a spouse's disability; wellness programs provided by a third-party vendor; and ADEA and retirement planning advice. (Joint Committee on Employee Benefits [JCEB], American Bar Association)  

Worker Opinions About Employee Benefits: Differences Among Millennials, Baby Boomers, and Generation X Have Implications for Plan Sponsors
"Millennials are less likely than Baby Boomers and Gen Xers to report health insurance as the most important benefit they receive at work. Millennials are more likely than Baby Boomers or Gen Xers to report that they value life insurance and paid time off as the most important benefit. Millennials are less likely than Baby Boomers and Gen Xers to report that the benefits a potential employer offers are extremely important in their decision to accept or reject a job.... Millennials are more likely than other workers to respond that they do not know about their benefits. Participation in various employee benefit programs is generally lower among Millennials than among Baby Boomers and Gen Xers." (Employee Benefit Research Institute [EBRI])  

Think Automatic Vesting on a Change in Control Is Not Important? Ask This Former Employee
"[T]he court found that the language of the [long-term incentive plan (LTIP)] was clear; there could be no legal dispute that [the employee's] employment with the company had terminated, even though she continued to sit at the same desk and perform the same job functions on the day after the sale of OCD as she did on the day before the sale. The LTIP did not provide for accelerated vesting of [this employee's] RSUs. The provisions of the LTIP on change in control simply did not apply to the sale of a division of the company." [Timian v. Johnson & Johnson, No. 6:15-cv-06125 (W.D.N.Y. Oct. 26, 2015)] (Winston & Strawn LLP)  

Executive Incentives in the Natural Resources Industry Include Safety Metrics
"At the executive level ... [i]n almost half (45%) of the companies surveyed, safety metrics represent a percentage of the annual incentive opportunity, typically between 10% and 20% of the overall opportunity. In about a quarter (22%) of the survey participants, the compensation committee considers safety when applying discretion to annual incentive plan outcomes, while another 12% use safety goals as a hurdle in their annual incentive plans." (Towers Watson)  

Executive Compensation Compliance Matters to Consider in 2016
"[I]ssues companies will need to address in the months ahead [include]: ... Hedging Policy Disclosure ... CEO Pay Ratio ... Pay-for-Performance Disclosure ... [and] Clawback Policy Disclosure ... [for which the] following steps should be on company calendars in advance of the rules being finalized: [1] Inventory existing compensation arrangements ... to determine what forms of pay are and aren't subject to clawbacks.... [2] Determine the extent to which current grant agreements and plan documents need to be updated to become subject to the clawback policy.... [3] Understand how the recoupment process (and stock value declines) would affect executives under different clawback scenarios.... [4] Instruct your legal counsel to report to you the extent to which imposing clawbacks is permitted or feasible under state and foreign laws.... [5] [R]eview the process by which pay decisions are documented so it's clear which payouts are based on financial metrics and which are not[.]" (Towers Watson)