90 pages. "The Department should issue guidance ... to serve as a road map for plan fiduciaries when selecting and monitoring both non-guaranteed and guaranteed retirement income options, inside or outside of a QDIA.... The Department should provide and update guidance to plan sponsors and other fiduciaries to improve participant education, notices, transparency, and disclosures regarding the actual investments held within the QDIA in all phases of participation ... The Department should amend the safe harbor for automatic rollovers to individual retirement plans to allow use of QDIAs as the investment safe harbor for involuntary, automatic rollovers."  MORE >>

"Genworth Financial has called on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals to disband a class of 4,000 retirement plan members who claim that underperforming BlackRock target-date funds (TDFs) significantly impacted their savings.... The company emphasized that some plan participants actually benefited from BlackRock TDFs, and thus, the case requires an individual assessment for each account[.]" [Trauernicht v. Genworth Fin., Inc., No. 22-0532 (E.D.Va. May 29, 2024; on appeal to 4th Cir. No. 24-220)]  MORE >>

"The Senate on May 6 confirmed Frank Bisignano as commissioner of the Social Security Administration in a 53-47 vote. Bisignano, board chair and CEO at Fiserv, was confirmed to a term that expires in January 2031."  MORE >>

"According to [a recent study] ... plan sponsors are seeing low financial literacy and limited engagement surrounding retirement income.... Along with low engagement, plan sponsors acknowledged undergoing competing priorities in their plans like internal resource constraints and navigating committee dynamics. Others worried about legal and fiduciary risks in offering retirement income solutions, and some plan sponsors admitted to foregoing providing structured withdrawal options or actively encouraging in-plan decumulation."  MORE >>

"[W]orkers who experience greater sub-annual income volatility are significantly more likely to cash out their balances at separation. The relationship between earnings volatility and cashout probability is conditional on annual income, driven primarily by negative earnings shocks, and most pronounced among low- and middle-income workers."  MORE >>

"Missouri's public pension plans are critically underfunded. Meaningful reform may be necessary to preserve their integrity, and yet, reform efforts in other states have foundered on legal challenges under federal and state contract clauses. This study sets out the way those challenges have unfolded in other states and the legal framework that will govern pension reform in Missouri."  MORE >>

"Under prior law, licenses to sell cannabis could not be transferred for five years, and then only under certain circumstances. The new law, SB-215, is a set of cannabis reform provisions that includes one allowing an exception to this rule when a cannabis licensee sells to an ESOP."  MORE >>