Cunningham v. Cornell is testing whether traditional 401k fiduciary compliance truly protects plan sponsors. Courts and regulators are probing governance gaps, personal liability, and participant harm more aggressively than ever.
Tag "fiduciary"
Fiduciary litigation did not let up in 2025, and 2026 is seeing even more refined theories targeting 401k plans. Plan sponsors must look beyond procedural checklists to avoid the top governance pitfalls that trigger personal liability and erode participant savings.
The Netflix Effect 401k retirement readiness problem may not come from bad markets, but from quiet disengagement. As automation pushes retirement saving into the background, readiness risks can grow unnoticed.
The S&P 500 looks diversified—until you see how few stocks actually drive the returns. As concentration rises, index construction itself is becoming a growing 401k fiduciary risk.
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.
In many small employer 401k plans, those pressures combine with poor vendor selection, weak oversight, and minimal participant education to create environments where employees pay more and get less.
The broader plan-design conversation, including “Beyond Auto-Mania,” shows a shift from simple auto-features to guided, retirement-readiness approaches. That trajectory supports treating embedded income as part of a holistic, user-friendly design rather than a fringe option.
Seasoned advisors caution plan sponsors not to confuse delegation with disappearance. Every fiduciary duty can be shared. None can be erased.
If you’ve ever lost an hour chasing a quote you couldn’t comfortably reference—or hesitated to send a summary because it didn’t feel “file-worthy”—the FiduciaryNews.com Reference Librarian solves that.
What The $955 Retirement Savings Headline Gets Wrong (And Why Fiduciaries Should Care)
The $955 retirement savings headline sparked national alarm, but fiduciaries must look beyond shock value to understand what the data truly reveals and how to respond.