Tag: Fiduciary

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.

According to the text of the complaint, the act that created the California Secure Choice program “violates the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution because it is expressly preempted by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.”

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.

The DOL found the company's president and CEO did not process any distribution requests submitted by 401(k) plan participants, among other ERISA violations.

The district court’s new decision comes after its previous move denying defendants’ motion for summary judgment against plaintiffs’ claims, which cover a variety of fiduciary breach allegations; a new ruling is now forthcoming. 

Participants in the Lowe’s 401(k) plan have filed an ERISA complaint against their employer and Aon Hewitt Investment Consultants over alleged imprudent investment decisions.

The decision puts another layer of finality on the fate of the now-defunct Department of Labor fiduciary rule expansion, meaning the compliance landscape has shifted yet again for plan sponsors.

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.

According to the DOL and FBI, two former executives of First Farmers Financial produced false documents and sent them to a Milwaukee investment firm to support “sham loans,” causing the firm’s clients, including ERISA retirement plans, to suffer nearly $180 million in losses.

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 mixed decision comes after DOL moved for summary judgement; the defendants responded by moving to exclude key testimony from a DOL expert on the doctrine of “adequate consideration.”

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 fiduciary governance group is designed to counsel investment committees and service providers, with a focus on avoiding and responding to fiduciary breach litigation, among other topics.

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.

Curcio Webb serves as an independent intermediary helping plan sponsors select and monitor 3(38) advisers and outsourced chief investment officers; the matchmaker firm offers some insight about what makes for a good adviser-sponsor fit.

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.”

To help ease the immediate concerns and confusion of clients, the law firm Stroock has published a helpful guide that dissects the latest fiduciary rule developments; on one attorney’s assessment, it actually is not that likely that the U.S. Supreme Court will get involved.

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.

In issuing a strong ruling to vacate the DOL fiduciary rule expansion, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is now at odds with multiple other courts that have upheld the rule, including the Tenth Circuit.