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A Connecticut-based fiduciary investment adviser agreed in a settlement to pay about $1.3 million to 13 pension plans to resolve alleged ERISA violations related to mutual fund fees the firm received. USI Advisors Inc. made investments in mutual funds on behalf of ERISA-covered defined benefit plan clients and received 12b-1 fees from those funds, according […]
Concerns are mounting in the United States about the increase in retirement plan “leakage” — hardship early withdrawals and loans being taken against such plans during tough economic times. As more Americans deplete their retirement savings to meet emergency expenses resulting from long-term unemployment, tightened credit or high medical expenses, policy makers are seeking ways […]
A company owner and another manager are not fiduciaries as defined by ERISA and the contributions they failed to make to their employees’ pension plans were not plan assets, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled. This decision supports the premise that individual company officials who serve only as conduits for employees’ payments to […]
Plan sponsors and participants both want to ensure better retirement savings but they often wonder which factor in the process matters most. A study from Putnam Institute suggests sticking with the obvious: The higher the deferral rate during an employee’s working life, the greater the long-term returns. Despite intense focus on fund performance in the […]
By Jane Meacham An appellate court sided with a plan administrator’s decision that a deceased plan participant’s stepsons are not entitled to his pension benefits, a ruling that may set the direction for similar plan interpretations under ERISA law. In the case, Herring v. Campbell , Case 11-40953 (Aug. 7, 2012), John Wayne Hunter, a retiree […]
By Jane Meacham The funded status of the average U.S. corporate pension plan slid to a record low in July, according to several measurements of the health of the plans’ finances. Funding status of the typical plan surveyed for BNY Mellon Pension Summary data touched a low of 68.7 percent, off 2.9 percentage points from […]
By Jane Meacham Employers should exercise oversight of third-party administrators, to ensure they distribute accurate plan notifications and information about beneficiary distributions. That’s because in the case of certain errors, the TPA may end up not being defined as a fiduciary, as Judge James Graham in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, Eastern Division, ruled in Stark […]
By Jane Meacham Employers and plan administrators may want to err on the side of providing more information, not less. That is one of the messages behind a recent decision by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, Western Division. In Arp v. Whirlpool Corp., Case No. 3:12 CV 770 (July 10, […]
By Jane Meacham The U.S. Department of Labor on July 30 quickly revised its field assistance bulletin on retirement plan fee disclosures to clarify a contested question’s impact on so-called brokerage windows and self-directed accounts, which allow plan participants to select investments beyond those designated by an employer-sponsored plan. In the clarification, a new question […]
By Jane Meacham A plan sponsor’s immunity from financial losses that resulted from its shift of retirement plan participants’ investments into qualified default investment alternatives was upheld by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in its decision in Bidwell v. University Medical Center Inc., Case No. 11-5493 (June 29, 2012). Facts of the Case […]