Showing entries with the topic “Fiduciary 101”.
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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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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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