Viewed through that lens, a 401k Christmas wish list isn’t just about outcomes, but about predictability. A stable rulebook can make it easier to design, monitor, and maintain plans that work in practice as well as on paper.
Such hesitation shifts the spotlight back to fiduciary fundamentals. New rules may widen the menu, but ERISA doesn’t relax the obligation to fully understand and monitor what’s offered.
So, reams of respondents spilled their guts: compliance is king, tech’s your knight, and referrals rule revenue (which make them your queen, but who plays the pawn in this game of fiduciary chess?).
2024 was a year of adaptation for retirement plan fiduciaries who navigated through regulatory changes, legal landscapes, and participant needs with a renewed focus on governance, liability management, and the holistic management of retirement plans.
In a strange twist of fate, it appears the newsweekly publication business model was closer to retirement in 2009 than the 401k.
It seems like each decade produces a major box office hit that exudes fiduciary. This whole “best interest” thing seems to have caught on in Tinseltown. More recent movies have added a good dose of the “honesty” part of fiduciary.
Worse, if the “alternatives” alluded to by the paper entail government backed programs like Social Security, this could have a debilitating impact on encouraging people to be responsible for funding their own retirement.
We take a different approach by looking not too far back in the past. This avoids the “getting lost in the sauce of history” problem so many retrospectives have. It’s the opposite of the “recency” problem, where we place too much emphasis on that which lies closest to our memories. Often, instead, we’ll give more than proper weight to happenings in a distance that is rapidly losing relevance.
Here’s what’s been hot this year. Can you see why?
401k New Year Opportunities
The calendar flipped to 2026, and with it came a fresh crop of 401k new year opportunities. Will this be the year 403(b) plans finally shed legacy costs, SECURE 2.0 provisions hit their stride, and markets remind participants that risk never really sleeps?