Showing entries with the topic “Fiduciary 101”.
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Mar 2020SECURE Act Part-Time Employee Provision: Don’t Count Hours Unless Absolutely Necessary!
I recently attended the That 401(k) Conference in Orlando, Florida, where conference moderator, Ary Rosenbaum (who runs the amazing and informative That 401(k) Site), conducted a session on the impact of the SECURE Act. In that session, he stated that one of the biggest administrative issues created…
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Jan 2020The Beginning of the End for Asset-Based Retirement Plan Recordkeeping Fees?
In The Top Retirement Plan Trends for 2020 we discussed the migration of retirement plans from traditional percentage of assets-based recordkeeping fees to per-participant fee structures. By implementing a per-participant model, recordkeeping fees do not snowball as plan assets grow (which only stan…
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Jan 2020The SECURE Act Facts: What You Need to Know Now
To the surprise of many, significant retirement plan legislation, known as the SECURE Act, was signed into law by President Trump on December 20, 2019, thanks to its attachment to a must-pass budget appropriations bill. While comprehensive coverage of the Act will be the feature of upcoming thought …
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Dec 2019Retirement Plan Committee Members: Why You Shouldn’t Be a Heat or Snow Miser!
My favorite holiday animated special is not Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (although I love me some Bumble) or Frosty the Snowman. It’s The Year Without a Santa Claus, hands down. And no, it is not due to the admittedly lame plot of Santa wanting to cancel Christmas because he feels—wait for i…
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Oct 2019The New DOL e-Disclosure Regs
On October 22, 2019, the Department of Labor (DOL) issued the long-anticipated proposed regulations addressing electronic disclosure of ERISA-required documents such as Summary Plan Descriptions, benefit statements, fee disclosures and blackout notices. For retirement plan sponsors, the paperwork bu…
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May 2019The Future of Retirement Plans
In our Revamping Retirement podcast, we have been addressing the evolution of the retirement plan landscape over the past 25 years. And a lot has changed - from technology, plan design and investments, to, of course, fees. But what might the next 25 years have in store for the future generation of r…
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May 2019Something New I Learned from the DOL
Even after 27 years in the retirement plan business, there is hardly a week that goes by where I don’t learn something new - and the past few weeks have been no exception! Recently, Greg Needles of Morgan Lewis and I had the distinct pleasure of sharing a podium with Preston Rutledge, head of the E…
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Jan 2019You Have a Retirement Plan Committee - But Do You Have a Committee Charter?
Retirement plan committees (which are sometimes broken down into separate committees such as an investment committee and/or an administrative committee) serve an important function to ensure that the plan fiduciaries fulfill their responsibilities. While most plan sponsors utilize these committees,…
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Aug 2018Making Sense of Auto-Enrollment Rules
While the IRS means well, when reviewing some of the regulations, I cannot help but wonder if someone was thinking, “How can I make this as difficult to understand as possible?” Such is the case with automatic enrollment. To start, the IRS doesn’t call it auto-enrollment, they refer to it as an “au…
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Jul 2018Don’t Hire an Investment Advisor!
Did the headline catch your attention? I know it sounds bizarre, given that our firm provides, well, investment advisory services - but hear me out. The majority of Requests for Proposal (RFPs) that we receive are for investment advisers or investment consultants. However, the plan spons…
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