NewsDash – April 3, 2024

April 3rd, 2024
Insight on Plan Design & Investment Strategy Every Weekday

Benefits

With Limited Resources, Managing 403(b) Plans in Higher Ed Brings Unique Challenges

As higher education plan sponsors often work with small benefits staffs and oversee diverse pools of employees, administering a retirement plan tailored to all employees’ needs is a difficult task.

Compliance

DOL Finalizes QPAM Rule

Qualified professional asset managers can now be disqualified for foreign convictions and domestic non-prosecution agreements.

Most Read

Opinions
Don’t Forget Decumulation: 3 Key Pillars for an Effective Retirement Income Solution

Deals and People
Financial Finesse Appoints New President

Compliance
5th Circuit Grants DOL 60 More Days on Fiduciary Rule Lawsuit

MARKET MIRROR

Tuesday, the Dow fell 396.61 points (1.00%) to close at 39,170.24, the Nasdaq fell 156.38 points (0.95%) to close at 16,240.45 and the S&P 500 fell 37.96 points (0.72%) to close at 5,205.81. The Russell 2000 fell 37.80 points (1.80%) to close at 2,065.04, and the FT Wilshire 5000 Index fell 440.91 points (0.84%) to close at 52,323.43.

The 10-year Treasury note fell 3/32, bringing the yield to 4.361%. The 30-year Treasury fell 30/32, bringing the yield to 4.501%.

Benefits

Washington State Auto-IRA Law Signed

Washington Saves is scheduled to debut in 2027, with the state joining 18 others that have created retirement programs for private sector workers, while Rhode Island lawmakers debate creating their own program.

ASK THE EXPERTS

Does Our Plan Fall Under SECURE 2.0’s Automatic Enrollment Requirement?

We are a private 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization that terminated a 401(k) plan that we had maintained for many years, replacing it with a new 403(b) plan, effective January 1, 2023. The SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 passed shortly before our plan’s effective date, and we do not meet any of the exceptions to the automatic enrollment requirement that will become effective on January 1, 2025 (e.g., we’re not a church, not a government and have more than 10 employees). However, in order for our plan to be effective on January 1, 2023, we had to have a plan document in place prior to that, so we adopted a written plan in November 2022. Would that get us off the hook in terms of the automatic enrollment requirement, even though we did not commence contributions to the plan until January 2023?

SMALL TALK

ON THIS DATE: In 1922, singer and actor Doris Day was born in Cincinnati. The same year, Joseph Stalin became secretary-general of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, a position that provided the power base for his dictatorship. In 1924, stage and motion-picture actor Marlon Brando was born in Omaha, Nebraska. In 1930, Helmut Kohl, who served as chancellor of West Germany from 1982 to 1990 and of reunified Germany from 1990 to 1998, was born in Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Germany. In 1946, the Japanese army general Homma Masaharu was executed for forcing the Bataan Death March. In 1948, President Harry S. Truman signed into law George C. Marshall’s post-World War II plan to revive the economies of western and southern European countries so as to foster democracy in the region. In 1961, comedian and actor Eddie Murphy was born in Brooklyn, New York. In 1968, at an event during the Memphis sanitation workers strike, civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his Mountaintop Speech; the following day he was assassinated. In 1973, the first handheld mobile telephone call was made by an employee of Motorola, who called AT&T’s Bell Laboratories. In 1996, federal agents in Montana apprehended Ted Kaczynski, a domestic U.S. terrorist known as the “Unabomber,” who had killed three people and injured more than 20 with explosives sent through the postal system. In 2016, private papers from a Panamanian law firm were made public and revealed how wealthy clients concealed their wealth and avoided paying taxes; the “Panama Papers” represented one of the biggest leaks of confidential data in history.

Industry Intel Roundup—Featured White Paper

PLANSPONSOR is pleased to present the next edition of our Industry Intelligence roundup. This week, we are featuring white papers offering key insights and analysis about the industry. The content was created to educate, inform and offer ideas for plan sponsors regarding plan design, investing, administration and compliance.