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
A “managed account” is a discretionary portfolio management service that makes investment decisions for individual participants within the confines of a 401(k) plan and its fund options. This service is fundamentally...more
Nokia of America is one of the latest employers hit with a class-action lawsuit over the fees in its 401(k) plan....more
Any article that states that revenue sharing has been declining in 401(k) plans is stating the obvious. Like with a dying business or organization, you can see it a mile away. Revenue sharing has been dying since the day that...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
I love when studies on retirement plans state the obvious. According to researchers from Vanderbilt University; the University of Texas at Austin and the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER); and the Board of...more
I always talk about how plan sponsors need to work with experienced financial advisors, third party administration (TPA) firms, and ERISA attorneys on their plan needs. Like with reasonable fees, I believe that the term...more
This is the eleventh in a series of articles about Best Practices for Plan Sponsors. To be clear, “best practices” are not the same as legal requirements. Instead, they are about better ways to manage retirement plans. In...more
A few weeks back, I published a blog post on some third-party administrators (TPAs) are not really in the administration business but are in the business of selling insurance and assets. So I used some examples from my past...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
An advisor asked me a very interesting question that had me thinking: since a good chunk of what an advisor does is helping a plan sponsor minimize their fiduciary duty, is it a proper plan expense to use assets to pay for...more
When I think of Gucci, I think of a high-priced brand. Coincidentally or not, they are being accused of running a high-priced 401(k) plan. Selling high-priced leather goods is OK, running an expensive 401(k) plan is not....more
I guess my comments regarding revenue sharing is a bit sarcastic, but I think accurate. While revenue sharing payments from mutual funds to TPA to help defray the costs of administration of a plan sponsor’s plan is legal, it...more
How You Can Stand Out From The Crowd As A Retirement Plan Advisor. It would be a detriment to focus only on this stuff. There are lots of financial advisors who claim they handle retirement plans, but there are...more
Editor’s Overview - In 2016, we saw a considerable uptick in the number and variety of excessive fee lawsuits commenced against plan fiduciaries of defined contribution plans. We begin the year by taking a look at these...more
When I first started in the business in 1998, daily valued, participant 401(k) plans were starting to become a big deal because the technology caught up with the idea of plan participants directed investments and that their...more
Thanks to the new Fiduciary Rule, I believe that you’re going to see more index funds in 401(k) plans. However, that’s no surprise because that‘s the way we’ve been heading now for the past 15+ years....more
When I first started in the 401(k) plan business in 1998, it was a boom time for the stock market and mutual funds. That got plan sponsors wanting daily valued participant directed 401(k) plans and that helped put almost an...more
Retirement plan revenue sharing has a bad reputation. Numerous lawsuits have been filed during the past year against employers that sponsor 401(k) plans alleging breach of fiduciary duty under the Employee Retirement Income...more
When I was a kid in the 1970’s, disco was the biggest thing. By 1980, disco was dead thanks to a backlash. People didn’t know it at the time, but disco died the night of July 12, 1979, thanks to the riot during a White Sox...more
Avoiding The “Bumps” Of Being A Retirement Plan Provider - I’m a big fan of business history and every successful company that has ever been founded has had a few bumps along the way. For example, Apple almost went out...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
ERISA litigators need to eat and once they exhausted much of the fee litigation prior to the implementation of fee disclosure, they needed something else to sink their teeth in. Then we got cases regarding using the wrong...more
The Supreme Court is poised to address whether fiduciaries' decisions—especially in using fee sharing arrangements—are subject to deference when challenged. The Eighth and Ninth Circuit courts recently decided these issues,...more
Dealing with adversity. It's about how you deal with it. I'm a huge Aerosmith fan since high school and it's because the music resonates with me because it reminds me of the experiences that I have gone through...more