Showing entries with the topic “Fiduciary 101”.
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Feb 2021Is the Final Fiduciary Rule Really Final?
Despite the new presidential administration hinting at a delay, the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Final Fiduciary Rule became effective on February 16, 2021. Since there has been more than a decade spent waiting for a rule to become the Final Fiduciary Rule, this is significant news. However, in a pr…
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Jan 2021Post-CARES Act: A Checklist for Retirement Plan Sponsors
As of this writing, the loan and distribution provisions of the CARES Act have not been extended. This means that these provisions expired on or before December 31, 2020. Considering this, plan sponsors should ensure that any CARES Act provisions added to their retirement plans are administered in a…
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Nov 2020The Final ESG Rule: What Happened?
A funny thing happened on October 30th when the Department of Labor issued what was to be its final ESG Rule, after the proposed rule was issued on June 23rd. The final rule, which was only eight pages long (after 140 pages of responses to comments from the public), contained no mentions of the term…
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Nov 2020SECURE Act: The Sequel
While I typically don’t write about proposed retirement plan legislation, since bills can take a long time to become law and provisions can change dramatically, I am making an exception for the latest piece of retirement plan legislation, which was introduced on October 27, 2020 by the chair of the …
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Oct 2020Tips for Improving Next Year’s Form 5500 Process
For many ERISA retirement plan sponsors, the first two weeks in October is rough. Why? Because October 15th is the 5500-filing deadline for the majority of calendar year plans. Each year, many plan sponsors scramble to file their 5500s at the absolute last moment. Unfortunately, this rush can increa…
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Oct 2020SECURE Act Refresher
Although it was signed into law on December 20, 2019, it seems like a decade ago that the SECURE Act was headline news. Between the COVID-19 pandemic and the flurry of legislative and regulatory activity in 2020, some plan sponsors have likely forgotten what was, at the time, the first piece of reti…
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Aug 2020More Questionable Retirement Plan Features
In a recent Top of Mind, and in our latest webinar, we shared some questionable plan features that came back to haunt retirement plan sponsors during the COVID-19 pandemic. But there are plenty of other questionable plan features that all too many plan sponsors adopt that can greatly increase plan a…
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Jul 2020What’s on the Agenda for Your Next Retirement Plan Due Diligence Meeting?
Another quarter has closed - and, for many plan sponsors, that means another quarterly due diligence meeting is just around the corner. Let’s say you are the committee chair in charge of putting together the agenda for the meeting. What will it consist of? Chances are that it will include a thoroug…
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Jul 2020The DOL’s Proposed Fiduciary Rule: Some “Top of Mind” Thoughts
As the 123-page Department of Labor (DOL) Fiduciary Rule arrived on my computer on the evening of June 29, I did not have high expectations. After all, the DOL has been at this for a decade, with no success. And the prior Fiduciary Rule - which I liked - did not survive a court challenge from the ve…
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Apr 2020CARES Act Q&A
Having just finished reading an epic piece (30 pages!) from S. Derrin Watson on the CARES Act retirement plan and related provisions, I thought a CARES Act Q&A on the top the five questions that appear to be tripping people up the most might be in order. The answers are based on the collective wisdo…
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