I don’t think the plan service providers should provide participant advice. Advice to participants should be provided by a non-related third-party fiduciary.
The DOL’s guidance on missing plan participants appears just as effective as its week 2012 Mutual Fund Fee Disclosure Rule. Yes, it’s there, but it has no viability. Still, that doesn’t mean 401k plan sponsors can ignore the issue, even if they have not lost participants.
States’ rights, strange brew, and going big.
The twist is this: The bad news is only a fraction of the people will be able to save $4.3 million for retirement because the average salary is too low. The good news is most people won’t need to save $4.3 million because, thanks to living on a low average salary, they are accustomed to spending far less.
A Social Security warning spelled out in dollars and cents, otherwise, it’s August, and you know what that means.
The challenge is plan sponsors often can’t determine if an account is forgotten until some triggering event. And by that time, it’s too late.
Here are some ideas that have been proposed before
The antiseptic compliance regime spelled out by the DOL and ERISA has to date defined fiduciary services. Perhaps, if we’re going to consider what is “beyond” that sterile definition, we might want to go back to the future. In a sense, rediscovering where “fiduciary” initially came from might suggest where it is headed.
Must be August. Lotsa stuff, the philosophy of fiduciary, and you’re too young to know.
FiduciaryNews.com Trending Topics for ERISA Plan Sponsors: Week Ending 9/1/23
Roth-A-Rama, fiduciary miss-mash (or miss-Mass?) and the slow agonizing death of ESG