Showing entries with the topic “Legislative/Regulatory”.
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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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Jan 2021The Coronavirus Relief Bill: Few Concerns for Retirement Plan Sponsors
This time last year, retirement plan sponsors and those who work with them were focused on the ramifications of the SECURE Act, the first piece of retirement plan legislation in over a decade. Shortly thereafter, the CARES Act took center stage and left plan sponsors to deal with more changes. Towar…
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Jan 2021The Final Fiduciary Rule: Déjà Vu?
On December 15, the Department of Labor (DOL) released what it calls “Prohibited Transaction Exemption 2020-02, Improving Investment Advice for Workers & Retirees,” more commonly known as the Final Fiduciary Rule. This comes after the Proposed Rule was released on June 29, with the comment period yi…
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Dec 2020My Letter to Santa, 2020 Edition
Dear Santa: Allow me to apologize for not writing to you since 2017. My lack of correspondence should in no way be interpreted as a lack of enthusiasm for considering my inclusion on your nice list, or, even worse, as a lack of belief in your existence. I have been quite busy working with our ret…
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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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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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Jul 2020The CARES Act “Run on the Bank” That Wasn’t
Remember back in March when retirement plan recordkeepers were panicking about the COVID-19 pandemic and the related stock market plunge, allegedly fielding record volumes of calls from frantic participants who not only wanted to flee equity investments, but also wanted to take out their money entir…
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Jun 2020It’s Time for the IRS to Eliminate the Retirement Plan Spousal Consent Requirement
The recent COVID-19 pandemic exposed a weakness in the retirement plan infrastructure when thousands of married retirement plan participants attempted to take loans and distributions from their plans and found out that, in order to do so, they had to have the written consent of their spouse and that…
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