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From 401(k) plans to vacation policy, this topic gives HR and Compensation professionals specific strategies on how to handle benefit plans. Articles also provide guidance to brokers, advisers and consultants.
It’s no surprise that research has found employees tend to delay or disengage from decisions they view as difficult and complex. In the 1980s, the struggle among employees was 401(k) adoption, even though it was the most practical retirement financial tool in the market. These days, the challenge is centered on consumer directed health plans […]
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has extended for an additional year the temporary nondiscrimination relief it offers closed defined benefit (DB) retirement plans.
In a highly competitive hiring landscape, employers are looking for ways to differentiate themselves to prospective employees. One option is to provide a more attractive or unique benefits package by including new and interesting benefit options.
Over the last decade, workplace flexibility has become a hot topic and a priority for many employees. Now that workers have options like telecommuting, alternative scheduling, and freelancing, they’re looking for flexibility in their benefits, too.
In part one of this article we explored the Department of Labor’s (DOL) guidance for locating missing participants in the event of a plan termination. Today we will look at what constitutes acceptable and unacceptable alternatives.
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL)’s guidance for locating missing participants in the event of a plan termination has become more widely accepted for finding such participants in a variety of scenarios. But the guidance does not clearly state at what point the retirement plan fiduciary has met its obligation to track down missing participants […]
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released a private letter ruling (PLR) on August 17 that appeared to give the go-ahead to an employer-sponsored student loan repayment benefit offered through the company’s 401(k) plan.
A shift to using real market returns for interest crediting in defined benefit (DB) plans’ cash balance (CB) features is lessening volatility and making the supplementary retirement accounts more appealing to plan sponsors—especially because this type of formula is more responsive to changing market conditions, according to a recent study.
Federal agency audits are never far from the minds of employer retirement plan sponsors and their third-party administrators (TPAs), but knowing which recurring errors and internal controls most interest the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) right now can be helpful in avoiding or preparing for such inquiries.
Approximately 30% of U.S. defined benefit (DB) pension plans currently have a funded status of 95% or higher, making a full buyout or significant risk transfer transaction a “feasible option” for a growing number of plans since the start of the year, according to a recent analysis by RiskFirst, a financial technology company that works […]