Key Takeaways: ..On November 10, 2021, the SEC released a Risk Alert which provides observations from recent examinations into advisers’ fee calculations. ..In yet another bleak report, the SEC declared that “most”...more
Why It Matters - Broker-dealers and investment advisers should take heed of OCIE’s guidance and assess their compliance policies and procedures accordingly. Compliance should consider, in consultation with their counsel,...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
Years ago, a lot of financial advisors weren’t aware of their role as a retirement plan advisor when it came to handling their plan sponsor clients. Most advisors were mailing it in, pocketing the quarterly fee without...more
For the past 7 years, fee disclosure has certainly helped you as a plan sponsor to finally understand the true cost of plan administration. That’s important because you have a fiduciary duty to only pay reasonable plan...more
When I was 13 and I had my Bar Mitzvah, I plunked down about $2,000 in 1985 money for a state of the art Apple IIe with a monochrome monitor. One of the first pieces of software I bought was that top desktop publishing...more
New Rules, Proposed Rules, Guidance and Alerts – SEC STAFF GUIDANCE AND ALERTS - SEC Staff Issues Guidance on Cryptocurrency-related Holdings - On January 18, 2018, the staff of the SEC’s Division of Investment...more
Thanks to fee disclosure regulation and litigation against plan sponsors, plan sponsors are focusing on the costs of administering their plan. That’s great, but there’s a problem because of the focus. A study recently shows...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
The new Department of Labor rule defining the scope of who is an ERISA fiduciary has caused much consternation among investment professionals. Much of the new rule is focused on reworking the outer fringes of the ERISA...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
Non-Enforcement - States are Accommodating Crowdfunding Offerings While the SEC Continues to Ponder Crowdfunding Rules - The SEC first proposed rules in October 2013 for the crowdfunding exemption which was included in...more
What Private Equity Funds Should Know About ERISA: Basics of ERISA Coverage - The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended (ERISA) imposes numerous duties on fiduciaries holding employee benefit...more
In two recent cases, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) has made clear that it has increased its focus on private funds and their allocation of fees and expenses. In the most recent, the SEC entered an order on...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
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 2 years later, it is still difficult to get...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
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
As an ERISA attorney with a national practice of plan sponsor and retirement plan provider clients around the country (cheap plug here), I hear many excuses as to why plan sponsors don’t want to take a look at their...more
Topics we will cover: • Introduction • Issues with Control Groups • Issues with Prohibited Transactions • Fee Disclosure - Excerpt from Who is in the Control Group? • Aggregation Rules (Section...more
On March 21, 2013 the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued its opinion in Tibble v. Edison International, in which the Court ruled that the plan fiduciaries of the Edison 401(k) Savings Plan (the “Plan”) had breached their...more
As we discussed in our previous Benefits eAuthority regarding the final rules on service provider fee disclosures, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued final regulations setting forth the fee disclosure obligations for...more