These three issues linger like a ticking time bomb. They’re out there. They’re going to go off at some point. We just don’t know when. Plan fiduciaries need to get ready for them.
Tag "401k"
These next three months may prove a watershed for 401k plan sponsors as new rules will dramatically alter how 401k plan sponsors manage their companies’ retirement plans.
Where’s the best place for the 401k plan sponsor to go for free help on their fiduciary duties and responsibilities?
If the DOL requires the 401k plan fiduciary to ignore a fund’s investment performance, but the SEC still requires funds to disclose that performance, which will 401k investors choose? More importantly, who’s left holding the liability bag?
Will Congress, the SEC and the DOL upgrade the current fiduciary standard to the trust model used by bank trust departments so successfully for more than a century?
As usual, be careful about elixirs marketed as cure-alls. Personally involved in creating CITs in the early 1990s specifically to market to 401k plans, I’ll share my experiences with you here.
$16.5 million is a large price to pay for disclosure and due diligence a plan fiduciary can simply and consistently address. This may be the easiest action a 401k plan fiduciary to take to prevent the camel from sticking his nose under the tent.
The question now on the mind of every 401k fiduciary: Will the DOL’s new rule increase my personal fiduciary liability?
Why wait until now to bring up the three-month old blog? The bigger question, however, remains, “How should a 401k fiduciary analyze mutual fund fees?”
Many feel the DOL rightly reversed earlier rules that allowed for too many potential conflicts-of-interest. But, will any new DOL guidelines only encourage a “cookie-cutter” approach, doing the investor more harm than good?
