Normally, interest rates rise with inflation. In turn, bond rates rise with interest rates. But that hasn’t happened. In fact, short rates remain at historic lows. This means folks sitting in money markets or “safe” government bonds (and bond funds) are seeing their retirement savings eroded away.
Tag "fiduciary"
If you’re a fiduciary of the acquiring plan, you want to make sure you’re not burdened with any unknown liabilities. If you’re a fiduciary of the acquired plan, you want to make sure the merger process doesn’t introduce new liabilities.
What would it take to realize the fiduciary liability of overtly using “risk tolerance” metrics? And what can 401k plan sponsors do about it?
The conflicts-of-interest inherent in selecting proprietary funds are apparent. Less so are the criteria used to determine what a suitable process might be.
But that idea contained a flaw. In the early years, limited choices made it easy for employees. The proliferation of the number of options in later years, however, exposed the lack of sophistication within the employee cohort. That can lead to bad decision-making. Alternative solutions were needed.
How do we design and administer retirement plans?
If a company sees a substantial number of employees exit their firm, this can have a detrimental impact on all areas. Even the company’s 401k can be negatively affected in a number of ways.
I’m old enough to remember a world before the 401k. So distant was this anomaly in the tax code, that I, like nearly everyone else, was unaware of its existence, let alone its significance when it was formulated in 1978. What makes this more ironic was that it was my Congressman, Barber Conable, that led the way.
In theory, 401k plans were always intended to be highly portable, but that’s not what happened. “Portability” only evolved to the extent that the most-attractive balances were picked off and rolled over to IRAs, and everyone else was left holding the bag.
The Biggest 401k Fiduciary Fireworks, Fizzles, And Flops In 2021
Flops may not be forever. They may just be good ideas before their time. If you’re going to belittle them, you best hurry, because, if you wait too long, you may just discover they aren’t flops anymore. As a result, let’s not waste any time before the shelf-life of these flops expire.