| | Second Opinions | | SECOND OPINIONS: Employer Shared Responsibility Rules | | Do the final regulations on the ACA employer
mandate requirements provide special measuring rules for an employee returning
after a leave of absence? Are
there safe harbors for determining whether the health coverage provided by an
employer is affordable? | | | Benefit Briefs | | Communications About HSAs Need Improvement | | Consumers, including those who currently have
health savings accounts (HSAs), do not fully understand them, a survey
indicates. Only 30% of current HSA account holders passed a basic HSA
proficiency quiz. The Alegeus Technologies 2014 Consumer and Employer
Healthcare Benefits Survey, found that particularly for HSAs, a lack of
understanding of the full account value proposition may be hindering
adoption—as more than 40% still view HSAs as spending accounts, exhibiting a
lack of understanding of the ability to save beyond the plan year, or invest
HSA funds. Survey findings revealed most employers offer limited benefit
support. | | Keep Money in Motion from Causing a Breach | | Rolling assets out of a plan is a broad area
that affects plan advisers, consultants, participants and fiduciaries in 401(k)
plans, says Jerry Schlichter. Service providers, advisers and broker/dealers
have many different ways to intersect with 401(k) plan participants, Schlichter
says, and participants can get bumped about in ways that don’t benefit them—and
could open the plan sponsor to some fiduciary liability. “The plan sponsor has
no obligation to advise participants on how they might roll over their 401(k)
assets, or whether they should roll them over,” Schlichter says. But, like the
good Samaritan, he says, if the plan sponsor does enter the fray, it should be
in a responsible way. If a large mutual fund company or recordkeeper is coming
in to offer rollover options, the plan sponsor will need to perform additional
work to check the quality of the offerings. | | | Buyer's Market | | Evanston Capital Management has released its
Evanston Alternative Opportunities Fund. The fund is a closed-end, non-exchange
listed investment registered under Investment Company Act of 1940. Shares of
the fund, however, are registered under the Securities Act of 1933. The fund is
available to U.S. accredited investors, including Employee Retirement Income
Security Act (ERISA) accounts, and has an initial minimum investment of
$50,000. | | The companies of OneAmerica have launched
OneCheck, a set of retirement plan health monitoring tools and reports for
participants and sponsors. One component of the new tool set is the OneCheck
Plan Report, which provides a plan-level analysis of an employee group’s
average income replacement ratio. | | American National Bank of Texas (ANB) has teamed
up with several firms to offer a retirement plan services solution known as the
Select Open Architecture Retirement (SOAR) program. ANB, a provider of
fiduciary and trust services, has partnered with United Retirement Plan
Consultants, Aspire Financial Services, IRON Financial, RJ20 and Financial
Wellness4Life, with the aim of providing fiduciary protection for plan sponsors
and enhanced retirement outcomes for their participants via the SOAR program.
The program acts as a simple turnkey platform with low fees, according to ANB. | | The 2014 PLANSPONSOR Recordkeeping Survey includes comparative client profile, market share and product data for 75 providers of defined contribution recordkeeping services. | | | Market Mirror | | Tuesday, the Dow closed 117.59 points
(0.69%) lower at 16,906.62, the NASDAQ fell 60.07 points (1.35%) to 4,391.46,
and the S&P 500 decreased 13.94 points (0.70%) to 1,963.71. The Russell
2000 lost 14.59 points (1.23%) to finish at 1,172.15, and the Wilshire 5000 was
down 170.67 points (0.81%) at 20,808.69.
On the NYSE, 3.2 billion shares changed
hands, with 1.5 declining issues for every advancing issue. On the NASDAQ, 2.7
billion shares traded, with decliners outnumbering advancers nearly 4 to 1.
The price of the 10-year Treasury note was up 16/32,
bringing its yield down to 2.558%. The price of the 30-year Treasury bond
increased 1 4/32, decreasing its yield to 3.375%.
| | | Rules & Regulators | | PBGC Puts Hold on Shutdown Enforcement | | The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation
announced a moratorium, until the end of 2014, on the enforcement of 4062(e)
cases. In
November 2012, the agency implemented a pilot program under which it generally
took no action to enforce section 4062(e) liability against creditworthy
companies or small plans, and targeted its 4062(e) enforcement efforts to
companies where the risk remained substantial. However, industry groups
expressed concern that the pilot program affected business transactions weaker
companies needed to recover. | | Maintaining Non-ERISA 403(b) Status | | Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regulations
requiring more oversight for 403(b) plans make it harder for those plan
sponsors that want to maintain non-ERISA status to do so. Certain 403(b) plan
types will never be considered governed by the Employee Retirement Income
Security Act (ERISA)—public K-12, college and university schools, charter
schools treated as public schools under state law, and church plans for which
the sponsor has not elected to be governed by ERISA. However, other 403(b) plan
types must adhere to certain rules to qualify for the ERISA exemption. In order for
501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations to be considered non-ERISA, the Department of
Labor (DOL has provided safe harbor criteria listing what employers may and may
not engage in as part of the day-to-day administration of the plan. Barbara J.
Webb, director of technical services at the Horsham, Pennsylvania-based PenServ
Plan Services, Inc., reminded attendees of the National Tax-deferred Savings Association’s
(NTSA) 2014 403(b) Summit what the criteria are. | | | Financial Sense | | The Towers Watson Pension Index shows a 1.2%
increase in the funded status of defined benefit (DB) plans during June,
resulting in an index score of 75.1 as of June 30. Strong equity returns and a
slight increase in bond yields were factors in moving the index up in June,
says Towers Watson. While the June increase reverses a three-month decline in
funded status, the index remains down 4% for 2014. | | The funding for defined benefit (DB) retirement
plans sponsored by S&P 1500 companies showed a slight improvement during
June, according to a recent analysis from Mercer. The consulting firm finds
that the estimated aggregate funding level for these DB plans increased by 1%
in the month of June, ending the second quarter of 2014 with a funded ratio of
85%. | | | Sponsored message from SEI | Can DB investment practices help DC participants reach income needs?
Join SEI’s Managing Director of Defined Contributions, Scott Brooks, for this 6 minute video presentation providing insight on implementing DB approaches to help improve DC participant results. | | | Small Talk | | Americans Lack Confidence About Personal Finances | | A majority of Americans lack confidence in their
ability to manage personal financial issues, with more than one-quarter (26%)
wishing they didn’t have to deal with finance at all. Consumers may be hesitant
to reach out for help due to misconceptions about financial counseling, the
poll results suggest. | | ON
THIS DATE: In
1777, New York elected Brigadier
General George Clinton as the first governor of the independent state of New
York. Clinton would go on to become New York’s longest-serving governor, as
well as the longest-serving governor in the United States, holding the post
until 1795, and again from 1801 to 1804. In 1850, Zachary Taylor, the 12th president of the United States, died
suddenly from an attack of cholera morbus. In 1868, the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified. The
amendment was designed to grant citizenship to and protect the civil liberties
of recently freed slaves. It did this by prohibiting states from denying or
abridging the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,
depriving any person of his life, liberty, or property without due process of law,
or denying to any person within their jurisdiction the equal protection of the
laws. In 1872, the doughnut cutter
was patented by John F. Blondel. In 1877,
Alexander Graham Bell, Gardiner Greene Hubbard, Thomas Sanders and Thomas
Watson formed the Bell Telephone Company. In 1877, the All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club began its first
lawn tennis tournament at Wimbledon, then an outer-suburb of London. In 1878, the corncob pipe was patented by
Henry Tibbe. In 1947, in a ceremony
held at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, General Dwight D. Eisenhower
appointed Florence Blanchfield to be a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army,
making her the first woman in U.S. history to hold permanent military rank.
WEDNESDAY
WISDOM: “I have
not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”—Thomas A. Edison
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