DOL
Can Auto-Enrollment Success Lead To Retirement Savings Failure?
An investment designed to protect a small account from immediate losses may become an obstacle to long-term growth. As months turn into years, inflation, account fees, and the opportunity cost of foregone investment returns can gradually undermine the retirement security that automatic enrollment was intended to promote.
What Happens When The Last 401k Plan Fiduciary Disappears?
When an employer disappears, who becomes the abandoned 401k plan fiduciary? The answer isn’t necessarily the recordkeeper, the trustee, or even the person who happens to have the keys to the former employer’s office. In fact, the answer may depend on how the company went out of business in the first place. There are several […] Read Full Article
Does Retirement Plan Proxy Voting Choice Change Who Owns The Vote?
Making a feature visible, however, does not necessarily make it a controlling investment criterion. A fiduciary may have reason to understand how participant-directed or sponsor-directed voting works without allowing the presence or absence of the feature to overwhelm the investment analysis itself.
Decumulation Strategies Create New Fiduciary Questions For 401k Plan Sponsors
The reality is that many retirement planning decisions already require participants to evaluate concepts they may not fully understand. That reality raises an important question. Should a plan exclude a potentially beneficial option simply because some participants may find it difficult to understand?
Will Cybersecurity Enforcement Change What Fiduciaries Must Protect?
That does not necessarily mean fiduciaries should expect a wave of new regulations. Existing direction may already point fiduciaries toward the safeguards regulators expect them to implement.
401k Designated Investment Alternatives Demand Fiduciary Discipline
Private equity inside a daily-valued, participant-directed plan introduces structural tension. Illiquid assets must coexist with participant liquidity expectations. Valuations must be estimated where markets do not exist. And governance must bridge that gap without introducing bias or delay.
401k Fiduciary Rule Limbo Exposes Plan Sponsor Risk
The 401k Fiduciary Rule limbo is here. The regulation is gone. The risk is not. With the formal vacating of the 2024 “Retirement Security Rule” effective April 20, 2026, plan sponsors are once again operating without clear regulatory direction. The expected replacement rule has not yet arrived. Committees are left navigating a familiar but uncomfortable […] Read Full Article
Forfeiture Lawsuits Raise New Governance Risks for 401k Plan Sponsors
Ongoing forfeiture lawsuits involving major plans are reshaping how courts evaluate fiduciary oversight. Sponsors who rely on routine processes may discover that governance gaps create legal exposure for committees and financial harm for participants.
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