PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Trends in Recordkeeper Consolidation and Due Diligence
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Exploring the Value of Qualified Default Investment Alternatives
The Form 5500: What All Employers and Plan Administrators Need to Know and How to Avoid Costly Fines
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Cautionary Tales for Preapproved Plan Documents
DOL Clarifies Timing of Lifetime Income Disclosures in Benefit Statements
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Payroll Integration for Plan Sponsors
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Plan Administrators’ 2020 Year-End Checklist
Cutting Costs With Employee Benefit Plans (Part 5 of 5) – Implementation
Cutting Costs With Employee Benefit Plans (Part 4 of 5) – Retirement Plan Costs
Cutting Costs With Employee Benefit Plans (Part 3 of 5) – Medical Benefit Costs
Cutting Costs With Employee Benefit Plans (Part 2 of 5) – Identifying Potential Targets
Cutting Costs With Employee Benefit Plans (Part 1 of 5) – Using Benefit Plans to Save Money
CARES Act – Retirement Plan Distributions and Loans: Troutman Sanders and Pepper Hamilton COVID-19 Issues for Employers Podcast Series
Blakes Continuity Podcast: COVID-19: The Regulatory Impact on Pensions
PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Plan Administrators’ 2019 Year-End Checklist
Being an ERISA attorney for a couple of third-party administration (TPA) firms when I first started helps you develop a sense of humor because there are too many people I was associated with who had absolutely zero training...more
Retirement plans with more than 100 participants require a CPA audit for their Form 5500. However, small plans with less than 100 participants may sometimes require an audit. This often happens when more than 5% of the Plan’s...more
Owners and employees of smaller organizations often find themselves stretched in many directions. With all of the demands on one’s time associated with operating a business, it is not uncommon to see attention to the...more
As they once said in This is Spinal Tap, there is a fine line between stupid and clever. I can assure you that Michael McKeon who played David St. Hubbins in the movie and co-wrote it, was not in plan administration. Based on...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: Administrators of ERISA plans frequently receive requests from participants, beneficiaries, and their representatives for plan-related documents. A recent decision from the Court of Appeals for the Fifth...more
If you’re a closely held business or not, changes do happen. Whether it’s leadership or who serves as your plan’s trustee, change will likely happen. The problem sometimes is when the plan document has been updated to reflect...more
I’ve spent 21 years as an ERISA attorney and took some classes when I was getting my LLM and I learn something new about retirement plans every day. As a financial advisor, you likely didn’t have the training to be an ERISA...more
Our ERISA Practice Center blog posts often discuss many complex, and sometimes esoteric, substantive and procedural ERISA issues, as well as related agency guidance and case law. In this new ten-part blog series, however, we...more
After annoying many plan sponsors and plan providers by increasing user fees for their voluntary compliance program (VCP), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) goes the other way by increasing the number of opportunities for...more
Despite the insane popularity of Marie Kondo and her tidying methodology, when it comes to your agency’s retirement (and welfare) plan documents: more is better. ...more
There are so many articles for plan sponsors (I’ve written quite a few) where they go on and on about what plan sponsors need for a successful 401(k) plan. Rather than go into a whole diatribe, here is a Reader’s Digest of...more
When it comes to drafting plan documents, I always say K.I.S.S.: keep it simple, stupid....more
Plan Sponsors Need To Fix Their Plan Errors Now! You can't wait, fix it now! For most of us, when we don't feel well, we go to the doctor. We don't wait until things get worse, we take care of things because there...more
• The recent Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (the Act), enacted on Dec. 22, 2017, contains a few rules that will impact benefit administrators. • This client alert focuses on changes made to the tax treatment of plan loan...more
Being a plan sponsor is a tough job and the amount of paperwork that goes with it can be overwhelming. The paperwork includes plan documents, summary plan descriptions, amendment, valuations, trusts statements, and payroll....more
In a decision issued a couple of years ago, the United States Supreme Court held that a summary plan description that differed from the plan document could not be enforced as the plan document. The Court said that the summary...more