PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Can Employers Impose a Health Insurance Surcharge on Plan Participants Not Vaccinated for COVID-19?
SECURE 2.0 provided employees better access to liquid assets during a major life crisis. We have previously discussed the domestic abuse victim distribution exemption and the emergency personal expense distribution exemption...more
The end of the year is fast approaching. Before calendars fill up too much with parties and PTO, now is a good time to take stock of year-end notice requirements for plan sponsors. As a quick reference, included below are...more
The problem with offering participants direction of investments is participants themselves. As a whole, they make poor investment decisions and exhibit poor timing. So that is just another reason why Bitcoin and 401(k) plans...more
Following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Hughes v. Northwestern University, courts around the country continue to articulate the pleading requirements for a breach of duty of prudence claim under the Employee Retirement...more
The federal Thrift Savings Plan will allow participants to allocate some of their assets through a self-directed brokerage account (SDBA) this summer....more
Given the current market volatility, the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) concerns related to the addition of cryptocurrencies in qualified retirement plans seems prescient. In Compliance Assistance Release No. 2022-01, the...more
Late last month, Fidelity Investments created a minor firestorm when it announced that it would allow retirement plan sponsors to offer bitcoin as an investment option for participants. In reaction to this move, the...more
On March 10, 2022, the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) issued a Compliance Assistance Release (the “Release”) addressing its views on the availability of cryptocurrencies on 401(k) investment platforms. This guidance comes...more
On January 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down an important decision affecting plan fiduciaries who select investment options available to participants in a self-directed employee retirement plan (such as a 401(k)...more
On January 24, 2022, in a rare, unanimous 8-0 decision (Justice Barrett recused herself from the case), the Supreme Court of the United States (the “Supreme Court”) vacated a Seventh Circuit affirmation of the dismissal of...more
In Hughes v. Northwestern University, current and former participants in Northwestern University's defined-contribution retirement plans filed litigation on behalf of the plans' participants asserting that the University, its...more
Just this month, the Supreme Court issued its much anticipated decision in Northwestern University, the first time the Court has been called upon to examine a lawsuit alleging that a 401(k) plan’s investment and fees were...more
The U.S. Supreme Court recently heard arguments in Hughes v. Northwestern University, in which the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals had rejected claims that the fiduciaries of two defined contribution retirement plans at...more
KEY TAKEAWAYS - ..Plan fiduciaries have a duty of prudence to independently evaluate on an ongoing basis investments offered in a plan’s menu of options and remove any imprudent ones. ..Plan participants’ ultimate...more
In the good old days of participant-directed 401(k) plans, a good chunk of financial advisors did very little work for the plans that they advised. Many of them sat back, collected their trail or asset-based fee, and maybe...more
A character in This Is Spinal Tap said it best: “there is a fine line between being clever and being stupid.”...more
Less is more, I believe that. As an attorney in an occupation where most attorneys charge by the hour and believe more is more, I am an outlier. ...more
According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), about 40% of 401(k) plan participants don’t fully understand the fees they are paying. Even with fee disclosure rules implemented in 2012, 41% of participants...more
Welcome to Goodwin’s ERISA Litigation Update. Litigation involving ERISA-governed benefits plans has exploded in recent years. Lawyers in our award-winning ERISA Litigation practice have extensive experience litigating these...more
On July 16, 2021 the IRS issued Revenue Procedure 2021-30, which modifies and supersedes Revenue Procedure 2019-19, expanding the Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System (“EPCRS”). EPCRS is a program for correcting...more
A recent survey shows that more participants are more positive this year about meeting their retirement objectives than last year. This may be due in part to a renewed commitment to save more by almost half of those surveyed....more
The beauty of fee disclosure regulations and technological breakthroughs is that 401(k) fees have been sliding. Even 9 years after the promulgations of the fee disclosure regulations, it’s still sliding....more
When I was younger, I was a pessimist. Everything to me, like a bad grade in Civil Procedure I was the end of the world and I realized eventually, that it wasn’t. I learned optimism is easier to manage than pessimism....more
The Godfather Rules And Your 401(k) Plan - Two of my favorite movies of all time are The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. I’m even a fan of The Godfather Part III, despite some of the unwarranted criticism. It’s more...more
Kiplinger conducted a poll that showed that plan participants did raid their retirement plan accounts because of COVID. ...more