PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - New IRS Guidance on SECURE 2.0 Act Student Loan Employer Contributions
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Understanding Lifetime Income Products
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Trends in Recordkeeper Consolidation and Due Diligence
Long-Term Part-Time Employee Eligibility Rules Now in Effect — Troutman Pepper Podcast
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - What the J&J Case Means for Plan Administrators
What Can A Tax Attorney Do For You? A Podcast With Janathan Allen
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Understanding Fees in Retirement Planning
The No Surprises Act: A Cost Saving Opportunity for Employer Plan Sponsors
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - ESG Investing by Retirement Plans
Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation: Getting Ready for 2024 – Top-Hat Plans — Special Edition Podcast
Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation: Getting Ready for 2024 - Health and Welfare Plan Developments — Special Edition Podcast
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Auto-Portability: A New Way to Keep Retirement Savings Growing
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - IRS 2024 Health Plan Affordability Threshold May Put Some at Risk
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - SECURE 2.0 Act Relief for Plan Corrections
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Partial Plan Terminations
Podcast Episode 189: Adding Context to Compliance and Color To Your Legal Practice
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - SECURE 2.0 Act - More Relief for Plan Administrators
The Burr Broadcast April 2023 - The Official End of COVID-19 Emergencies
#WorkforceWednesday: SECURE Act 2.0 - What 401(k) Plan Sponsors Need to Know - Employment Law This Week®
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Plan Administrators’ 2022 Year-End Checklist
Since 2012 with fee disclosure regulations, we have seen 401(k) fee compression and the latest 401(k) Averages Book shows that it’s continuing....more
As reported in our January 7, 2022 SW Benefits Blog “The DOL Asks and Answers Questions About the New Welfare Plan Fee Disclosure Rules,” group health plans must now comply with the ERISA Section 408(b)(2) disclosure...more
As an ERISA attorney, my retainer agreements are pretty straight and clear. Governed by the laws that govern attorney behavior, I have no choice. Yet, Third Party Administrators (TPAs) don’t have guidelines to live by. ...more
The Consolidated Appropriations Act ("CAA") includes a number of provisions enhancing transparency in the operation of group health plans. One of those provisions will require brokers and consultants to make fee disclosures...more
Buried in the year-end Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA) is a provision that requires group health plan brokers and consultants to make comprehensive fee disclosures similar to those that apply to retirement plans. As...more
While every large 401(k) plan is a target for a class-action lawsuit over costs, I believe the years of litigation and fee disclosure regulations will exhaust the number of class-action lawsuits, as well as courts taking a...more
The Department of Labor (DOL) has finally issued final regulations providing a new “notice and access” safe harbor for retirement plans to furnish required disclosures by email or other electronic ways to plan participants...more
Yet again, the end of the year is rapidly approaching! To avoid costly penalties that can arise from inadvertent errors in the year-end crush, plan sponsors should begin talking with their service providers now about what...more
Plan sponsors should understand that under ERISA, plan participants are entitled to certain disclosures and documents. We should all know that a participant is entitled to the summary plan description, summary annual report,...more
Everyone knows I love movies and the memorable lines that come from them. I’ma a big fan of The Dark Knight and the line uttered by Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent: You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself...more
On July 11, 2016, the Department of Labor (DOL), Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) announced a proposal to implement sweeping changes to the forms and regulations that govern...more
The landscape for the retirement plan business has radically changed since when I first started in 1998. Normal courses of business such as revenue sharing and non-transparency of fees were the order of the day. No one cared...more
How Retirement Plan Providers Can Deal With The Fiduciary Rule Change. Adapt to this change. At its prime, Blockbuster Video had 9,000 stores and was actually bought by Viacom in 1994 for $8.4 billion. Then some...more
The New Fiduciary Rule: What It Means To Plan Sponsors - Bottom line: what does it mean? More than a dozen years ago, there was a medical report that dental plaque could cause heart disease. I thought it was some...more
I worked for a third party administrator (TPA) for almost 5 years and one of my favorite things about the boss there was that he just wanted to cut to the chase. We had an actuary who developed a speech im- pediment when he...more
I talk to a lot of advisors and I have many advisor clients around the country and one of the things that I keep on hearing is that even with fee disclosure regulations almost 4 years later, it is still difficult to get...more
Empathy and Communication by a Retirement Plan Provider Goes A Long Way. It goes way far. They say that game theory is the study of strategic decision making. It is "the study of mathematical models of conflict and...more
The George Clooney-Brad Pitt trilogy of heist films known as Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve, and Ocean’s Thirteen were remembered for their twist endings, stylish pacing, and lightheartedness. Since the Ocean gang were...more
Plan Sponsors' Misconceptions About Retirement Plan Fee Disclosure. There are many. To me, there is no greater television show than Seinfeld because it's timeless and there is something about each episode that...more
Whoever said that there is no such thing as a dumb question obviously wasn’t in attendance at my Global History class in high school when someone asked whether it was true that if you take a picture of an Amish person, the...more
What was good yesterday might not be a good today. Asbestos was a great fireproof building material until it was found to cause asbestosis and malignant mesothelioma Thalidomide was a great drug for morning sickness until it...more
When my wife and I bought our house, there were quite a few things that the previous owner forgot to tell us such as the fact they never bothered to pull the pipes from the dental office run by a previous owner 20 years...more
On July 22, the Department of Labor (DOL) issued Field Assistance Bulletin No. 2013-02 (FAB 2013-02) that extended the deadline for plan sponsors to provide 2013 annual participant fee disclosures by six months. ...more
On July 22, 2013, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued Field Assistance Bulletin Number 2013-02, which offers sponsors of ERISA-covered retirement plans temporary relief from the participant fee disclosure deadline...more
The Department of Labor has provided plan administrators with a one-time opportunity to delay annual distribution of investment information to retirement plan participants for up to 6 months in 2013 or 2014....more