Tag: Fees

Understanding the opportunities associated with 3(21) and 3(38) fiduciary services—and the key differences between them—can help ensure the best use of the retirement plan committee’s time and resources.

The mixed ruling grapples with binding circuit court guidance and reaches quite different conclusions regarding various allegations of prohibited transactions and fiduciary breaches.

Underscoring the victory for Northwestern University and potentially giving some hope to other similarly positioned defendants, all pending motions were denied and the case has been terminated.

Expense ratios of target-date mutual funds averaged 0.44% in 2017; since 2008, ICI explains, the expense ratios of target-date mutual funds have fallen 34%.

The Wisconsin Association of Independent Colleges and Universities announced a partnership with Transamerica to create a 403(b) multiple employer retirement plan specifically for its educational institution members.

A TDF may invest its assets into index-based securities that do not make tactical adjustments as the markets change—but the act of managing even an index-based portfolio according to a glide path that ramps down equity risk over time will always be at least in part fundamentally “active.”

The text of the complaint includes substantial detail about the inner workings of the Home Depot retirement plan, and its relationships with advice providers Financial Engines and, later, Alight Financial Advisors.

The central claim in the failed class action was that plaintiffs were forced to overpay significantly for advisory services; defendants successfully argued the plaintiff failed to state an actionable claim.

A district court has ruled that the complaint “does not sufficiently plead that the defendants were engaged in the conduct of an association-in-fact enterprise or that each defendant engaged in a pattern of racketeering activity.”

The fact that two U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals, the Fifth and the Tenth, have issued conflicting rulings about the propriety of the DOL’s process in creating and implementing a stricter fiduciary standard, leaves the retirement plan industry with a number of challenging questions.

SEC-mandated regulatory filings from Wells Fargo Advisors have triggered state and federal inquiries into whether the firm’s advisers have made inappropriate referrals or recommendations, including with respect to rollovers for 401(k) plan participants.

Since the last study of this kind by CEM Benchmarking, average DB fund costs have increased from 0.40% to 0.60%, whereas DC plan costs have remained constant at 0.39%; overall, DB plans outperformed DC plans in the last decade by only 0.46%.

ERISA requires plan sponsors to regularly monitor investment lineups to ensure they remain prudent—a task made more complicated by the multi-layered construction of target-date funds; a new paper points to the best practices of defined benefit plans for some guidance.

A district court found plaintiffs met the requirements of ERISA Rule 23(a) and the class is maintainable under at least one of the subdivisions of ERISA Rule 23(b).

With the new opinion, the district court seeks to make clear where the line is when it comes to pleading standards in ERISA lawsuits.

For one thing, a federal court judge found the defendants provide no authority supporting their contention that a plan document executed after the participant has ceased participation in the plan can bind the participant to arbitration.