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| 2015 Plan Sponsor of the Year Nominations |
| Looking for Award-Worthy Plan Sponsors! |
| Is your company’s retirement plan run
exceptionally well? Is your pension plan well-funded and/or pursuing
interesting strategies (whether active or frozen)? Is your DC plan committee
focused on fulfilling fiduciary requirements and achieving successful outcomes
for participants? We are now accepting nominations for the 2015 PLANSPONSOR
Plan Sponsor of the Year awards. This is an excellent opportunity for you to
tell your story and share you successes with peers. We are looking for plans of
all types (pension, 401(k), 403(b), 457, public DC, etc) and of all sizes. You can nominate a plan, or yourself, here.Read more > |
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| Benefit Briefs |
| Plan Participation Rates Restart Slow Climb |
| The percentage of workers participating in an
employment-based retirement plan increased in 2013 for the first time since
2010, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). The
increased participation rate was noted both among all workers and among
private-sector workers, EBRI says. Specifically, the percentage of all workers
participating in an employment-based retirement plan increased to 41% in 2013,
up from 40% in 2010. The number of workers participating rose to 64.2 million
in 2013, the highest number since 2007. In general, EBRI found, each category
of workers was at its highest level of participation since the economic
recession began in 2008.Read more > |
| Analyze This: Know Thy Adviser Fees |
| A startling observation from data supporting the
“2014 PLANSPONSOR Plan Benchmarking Report” is that about 25% of respondents
are unsure of how—let alone how much—they compensate their adviser.Read more > |
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| Buyer's Market |
| Investment Manager MacKay Shields LLC is
expanding into the U.S. retirement market by delivering new investment
opportunities for qualified defined contribution retirement plan sponsors. MacKay
will act as adviser to two SEI Trust Company sponsored collective investment
trusts (CITs), implementing MacKay’s Core Plus Bond and Unconstrained Bond
strategies. “As the retirement market and the investment landscape continue to
evolve, we see participants and sponsors looking for key ways to diversify
their portfolios with well-established core fixed income strategies along with
alternatives to traditional fixed income strategies. To help defined
contribution investors meet their objectives, we believe that our Core Plus and
Unconstrained Bond strategies are well-positioned to deliver attractive
risk-adjusted returns,” MacKay told PLANSPONSOR.Read more > |
| Insurance Exchange Provider SelectQuote Senior
and technology firm Acclaris have partnered to offer a defined contribution
health care benefit employers may offer to retirees. “Employers are looking for
ways to manage the cost of providing retiree health coverage, and the retiree
community needs solutions that are easy to understand and manage to ensure they
get the full value of their benefits packages,” says Acclaris CEO Dean Mason.
“Defined contribution plans help employers minimize costs while easing the
reimbursement burden on retirees and giving them a broader choice of carriers.”Read more > |
|
| Market Mirror |
| Yesterday, the Dow was up 12.53 points
(0.07%) at 16,817.94, the NASDAQ increased 2.22 points (0.05%) to 4,485.93, and
the S&P 500 slipped 2.95 points (0.15%) to 1,961.63. The Russell 2000
decreased by 1.35 (0.12%) to 1,117.48, and the Wilshire 5000 closed 35.97
points (0.17%) lower at 20,654.16.
On the NYSE, 3.2 billion shares traded,
with 1.3 declining issues for every advancing issue. On the NASDAQ, 2.7 billion
shares changed hands, with a slight lead for decliners.
The price of the 10-year Treasury note ended
unchanged, with its yield up to 2.263%. The price of the 30-year Treasury bond
slipped 1/32, increasing its yield to 3.041%.
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| Rules & Regulators |
| PBGC Announced Benefit Maximum Increase |
| The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC)
increased the annual maximum guaranteed benefit for a 65-year-old retiree in a
single-employer plan to $60,136 for 2015. This is up slightly from the 2014
limit of $59,318, according to the PBGC. The increase is not retroactive;
payments to retirees whose plans terminated before 2015 will not change. In
addition, the guarantee for multiemployer plans has not changed, PBGC says.Read more > |
| Regulators Doing More to Ensure Compliance, Outcomes |
| Recent actions from regulators show a focus on
compliance and improved outcomes for participants. The Internal Revenue
Service’s (IRS) latest area of interest, according to Ilene H. Ferenczy, an
attorney with Ferenczy Benefits Law Center, is processes. Processes could
include policies, systems, computer programs and activities of the plan
sponsor, she explains. “The IRS believes plans with proper internal controls
are better administered; maybe they won’t have to review as much and can get
out of reviews faster,” she told attendees of the 2014 Association of Pension
Professionals and Actuaries (ASPPA) Annual Conference.Read more > |
| Industry Groups Endorse In-Plan Annuity Guidance |
| Recent guidance from the Internal Revenue
Service and the Department of the Treasury on in-plan annuity use has received
a warm response from some in the retirement plan industry. Treasury Department
and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) guidance published earlier in October seeks
to expand the use of income annuities in 401(k) plans. The Department of Labor
(DOL) also threw its hat into the game via an explanatory letter, confirming
that target-date funds (TDFs) that include annuities among their underlying
fixed-income investments satisfy qualified default investment alternative (QDIA)
rules. The flurry of regulatory activity around in-plan annuity use has
received positive marks from a number of industry advocacy groups—most of which
seem to agree that it’s important to find ways to expand the use of annuities
in defined contribution (DC) plans. For example, calling the guidance an
“important step to promote retirement security,” the Institutional Retirement
Income Council (IRIC) says it fully endorses the move by Treasury and the IRS
to bring more certainty to the process of folding annuities into qualified
retirement plans.Read more > |
|
| Small Talk |
| ON
THIS DATE: In 1636,
Harvard College was founded in Massachusetts. The original name was Court of
Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was the first school of higher education in
America. In 1793, Eli Whitney
applied for a patent for his cotton gin. In 1886, the Statue of Liberty, a gift of friendship from the people
of France to the people of the United States, was dedicated in New York Harbor
by President Grover Cleveland. In 1919,
Congress passed the Volstead Act over President Woodrow Wilson’s veto. The
Volstead Act provided for the enforcement of the 18th Amendment to the U.S.
Constitution, also known as the Prohibition Amendment. In 1965, construction was completed on the Gateway Arch, a spectacular
630-foot-high parabola of stainless steel marking the Jefferson National
Expansion Memorial on the waterfront of St. Louis, Missouri. In 1998, President Bill Clinton signs the
Digital Millennium Copyright Act into law, explicitly authorizing copyright
holders to issue “takedown” notices to individuals or companies
believed to be engaging in infringing use of a copyrighted work on the Internet.
TUESDAY
TRIVIA: The annual Guinness Book of World Records holds
a record itself as the best-selling copyrighted title of all time.
|
| TRIVIAL PURSUITS: What
sparked the idea for the Guinness Book of World Records?Read more > |
| Share the good news with a friend! Pass the Dash along – and tell your
friends/associates they can sign up for their own copy.Read more > |
| News from PLANSPONSOR.com
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2014.
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rights reserved. No reproduction without
prior authorization.
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