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[Official Guidance]
PBGC Guarantee Limit for Single-Employer Plans Increases for 2017
"[T]he guarantee limit for single-employer plans that fail in 2017 will be higher than the limit that applied for 2015 and 2016.... The increase is not retroactive; payments to retirees whose plans terminated before 2017 will not change.... Unlike the single-employer formula, the multiemployer guarantee is not indexed (i.e., it remains the same from year to year) and does not vary based on the retiree's age or payment form."
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation [PBGC]
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ESOP Fiduciaries Held Personally Liable in Bungled Plan Termination
"Fiduciaries of an employee stock ownership plan are personally liable for more than $874,705 in losses resulting from their mishandling of the plan's termination, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled ... Following a one-day bench trial on damages, Judge James Donato held that the losses suffered by the participants in the plan sponsored by California Pacific Bank were also losses to the plan for which the fiduciaries are personally responsible." [Perez v. California Pacific Bank, No. 13-3792 (N.D. Cal. Oct. 24, 2016)]
Bloomberg BNA
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Treasury Department Rules Give Annuities a Boost
"The new rules apply to distributions with annuity payments starting in plan years beginning on or after Jan. 1, 2017, and are intended to encourage plans to offer hybrid distribution options that include an annuity ... First proposed in February 2012, the regulations are an attempt to balance retirees' need for longevity insurance through partial annuity payments with the increased liquidity provided by lump sum payouts."
InsuranceNewsNet.com
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DOL Fiduciary Rule FAQs Emphasize Dangerous Compensation Practices -- Including for RIAs
"The DOL's guidance document clarifies that even if commissions or other third-party payments are leveled among products, the level-fee exemption, known as 'BICE light,' cannot be used by the broker.... But the DOL guidance didn't give a completely clean bill of health to level fees. It also said 'there is a clear and substantial conflict of interest' in so-called reverse churning, which occurs when a client who does little trading is put in a fee account that costs more than a commission-based account."
InvestmentNews
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The Big DB Plan Questions for 2017, Part 4: Do We Need to Think About Outsourcing?
"It's a tough time to be running a corporate pension plan, with low interest rates frustrating many sponsors' attempts to close the funding gap in the post-PPA world. For many plans, outsourcing can offer a compelling and robust way to enhance organizational focus and boost return seeking portfolio performance."
Russell Investments
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403(b) Retirement Plan Compliance in Light of Recent Fiduciary Litigation
"Fiduciaries of hospital or health system 403(b) retirement plans should take these steps now to ensure compliance and reduce litigation risk: Review governance structure.... Inventory the current state.... Conduct routine investment structure review and manager searches.... Conduct an RFP for recordkeeping services in the market.... Conduct a fee structure study.... Supervise ongoing due diligence and monitoring.... Additional protections modeling large 401(k) plans."
Willis Towers Watson
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[Opinion]
Target Date Fund Benchmarks Come in Two Colors: Black and White (PDF)
"Most TDFs are too risky at the target date because they aspire to serve participants beyond retirement. Even 'to' funds hope to keep assets in retirement.... The problems with this view are: [1] most participants withdraw their accounts at retirement, and [2] there is no one-size-fits-all-set-it-and-forget-it asset allocation that can possibly serve to manage longevity risk or compensate for inadequate savings."
Target Date Solutions
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Benefits in General
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SEC Comment Letter Trends: Pension and Other Postretirement Benefits (PDF)
13 pages. "This publication includes an analysis of comments made by the SEC staff to registrants published on the SEC's website between July 1, 2015 and June 30, 2016 related to pensions and postretirement benefits other than pensions (OPEB).... 70% of the comments received related to Form 10-K filings. When evaluated by section of the filing, 58% of the total number of comments received related to the financial statements. When evaluated by topical area, 34% of the comments related to disclosure and 17% related to assumptions."
PricewaterhouseCoopers
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Executive Compensation and Nonqualified Plans
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[Guidance Overview]
Share Withholding at Maximum Tax Rate
"Many existing equity compensation plans specifically limit share withholding to the minimum statutory tax rates in order to avoid potentially negative accounting consequences, i.e., liability accounting instead of fixed, grant-date accounting for equity awards. So the question has been raised whether amending an existing equity plan that limits share withholding to the minimum statutory tax rate would pose an issue under the exchanges rules. NYSE and NASDAQ have now both issued guidance on this issue which should help companies as they consider adopting ASU 2016-09 and implementing maximum share withholding."
EdwardHauder.com
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Will New SEC Guidance Make It Easier to Calculate Your CEO Pay Ratio?
"The new guidance ... covers five issues: [1] How to define a consistently applied compensation measure (CACM) to identify the median employee; [2] Whether and to what extent hourly or annual pay rates can be used as a CACM; [3] What time periods can be used in calculating compensation using a CACM; [4] How to treat furloughed employees and a reminder that seasonal and temporary workers cannot have pay annualized; [5] How a company should determine if a contractor or third-party service provider's workers are included or excluded from the employee population."
Willis Towers Watson
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Press Releases
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Lois Baker, J.D., President
David Rhett Baker, J.D., Editor and Publisher
Holly Horton, Business Manager
BenefitsLink Retirement Plans Newsletter, ISSN no. 1536-9587. Copyright 2016 BenefitsLink.com, Inc. All materials contained in this newsletter are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of BenefitsLink.com, Inc., or in the case of third party materials, the owner of that content. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.
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