Hello, PLANSPONSOR readers! This week the House voted in favor of President Donald Trump’s health care reform, but a survey finds, no matter what is in the reform, employers plan to keep many provisions to help employees. State- and city-run retirement plans for private-sector workers will lose their exemption from the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) if the president signs bills approved by the House and Senate. An ERISA attorney weighs in on how information about judges decisions could help them build their cases for plan sponsors; retirement plans are not out of the woods yet on tax reform; and a reader asks why the Department of Labor’s fiduciary rule would apply to individual retirement accounts (IRAs) but not non-ERISA 403(b) plans. All this and more in this edition of PLANSPONSOR Weekend!
New research from Willis Towers Watson suggests that employers expect to retain some of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA)’s popular provisions, “even if they are not required to by a new law.”Read more >
A resolution passed by the U.S. Senate is the latest step forward in the wider effort to roll back the regulatory safe harbors created by the Obama administration’s Department of Labor (DOL) to exempt from the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) state- and city-run retirement plans created for private-sector workers.Read more >
“Aren’t IRAs exempt from the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), and thus any of ERISA’s fiduciary provisions? And what about the many 403(b) plans that are also not subject to ERISA? If the fiduciary does not apply to those plans, why would it apply to IRAs?”Read more >
Share the news with a friend! Pass PLANSPONSOR Weekend along—and tell your friends/associates they can sign up for their own copy.Read more >
Industry sources agree pains must be taken to ensure mandatory lifetime income projections to participants are accurate and contextual education is provided.
The SECURE Act offered an annuity selection safe harbor for plan sponsors, but education will be the first step in getting this income protection to plan participants.
