"A variety of issues arise in determining whether an individual is an eligible designated beneficiary, particularly where the nominal beneficiary is a trust. Without special 'see-through' trust provisions, a retirement asset with a trust as beneficiary may need to be distributed by the end of the 5th year following the year the participant dies. The proposed regulations provide numerous examples, and the preamble to the proposed regulations discusses this issue in detail."  MORE >>

Three infographics reflect actual or expected timeline dates for Defined Contribution, Defined Benefit and Cash Balance, and 403(b) plan restatement cycles.  MORE >>

"Many of the SSRA's effective dates are slated to take effect at the beginning of 2023. If the SSRA is enacted at the end of this year, a 2023 effective date could make it difficult to quickly adopt operational and compliance measures. In addition, the House version of SSRA not only establishes a December 31, 2024, amendment deadline for calendar-year plans, but it also applies the same amendment deadline to the SECURE Act, [CARES] Act of 2020, and the Taxpayer Certainty and Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2020."  MORE >>

"Lump sum offerings to terminated vested participants have long been the first course of action in risk transfer strategies. However, 2022 may be the year where lift-out annuity purchases are actually more attractive."  MORE >>

"[T]he complaint fails to inform the court that the plan is filled with low-cost index funds in which the majority of the plan is invested ... Perspective has been lost in these cases as to whether a plan has low-fee investments versus a plan that offers high-fee investments, and what could be a plausible excessive fee claim.... [W]ith perspective and a detailed analysis of actual plan fees, it is easier to judge prudence.... This is not taking place in most excessive fee cases, and it is leading to inconsistent decisions that make little sense in the broader scheme." [Kruzell v. Clean Harbors Environmental Serv., Inc., No. 22-10524 (D. Mass. complaint filed Apr. 10, 2022)]  MORE >>

24 pages. "State and local government pension systems, many of which offer retiree health care as a cornerstone benefit, continue to wrestle with [managing costs]. Rapidly rising healthcare costs could compromise the pension benefits of current and future retirees and destabilize the very retirement security that pensions strive to provide.... One existing solution, retiree medical trusts (RMTs), has already proved attractive to many public sector employers and unions ... Like pensions, RMTs harness the power of collective investing to provide income in retirement -- in this case, for the specific purpose of defraying medical expenses"  MORE >>