This month’s employee memo encourages employees to make small lifestyle changes to reduce their out-of-pocket health costs. The memo shows the difference in savings between an average-managed patient and a well-managed patient. Please see an excerpt below. Believe it or not, staying healthy just might make you wealthy. With small lifestyle changes and healthy choices, … Continue reading Participant Corner: Good Health is the Best Wealth

With most retirement plans, the fiduciary responsibility of selecting and monitoring the plan’s menu of investments is designated to a retirement plan investment committee. This committee usually includes financial officers and human resources officers of the employer. The committee meets periodically (anywhere from annually to quarterly) to consider agenda items including investment due diligence, fees … Continue reading What Constitutes Proper Documentation of Retirement Plan Committee Meetings?

Businesses understand how vital it is for employees to understand retirement options and are increasingly including employee education in fiduciary risk management, whether it’s in the form of one-on-one counseling or educational seminars. Take a look at these reasons why you should communicate with and educate your employees. Gossip Can Be Dangerous If retirement opportunities … Continue reading Why You Need to Communicate with Employees

Subsequent to the 2012 implementation of ERISA fee reporting regulations (ERISA 408(b)(2) & 404(a)(5)), the Department of Labor (DOL) began to consider the appropriateness of the allocation of plan fees among participants. This is a subject that generally had not been on the radar screen of many plan fiduciaries, but once identified, tends to generate … Continue reading Are Your Participants Experiencing a Fee Imbalance?

Rising healthcare costs are on everyone’s mind, even for affluent people. In fact, 69 percent of affluent pre-retirees cite rising healthcare costs as one of their top fears in retirement, according to a survey from the Nationwide Retirement Institute. In fact, 63 percent of these affluent pre-retirees describe themselves as “terrified” of what healthcare costs … Continue reading How Can You Prepare for Healthcare Expenses in Retirement?

Some retirement plan expenses can be paid for with plan assets — but many can’t. Which are the “reasonable and necessary” retirement plan expenses that can be paid out of plan assets?Generally, services required to maintain the plan’s compliance and administration can be paid from plan assets. Obvious examples include the annual nondiscrimination testing and … Continue reading How and When to Pay Plan Expenses with Plan Assets

The Form 5500 is an ERISA requirement for retirement plans to report and disclose operating procedures. Advisors use this to confirm that plans are managed according to ERISA standards. The form also allows individuals access to information, protecting the rights and benefits of the plan participants and beneficiaries covered under the plan.Make sure you are … Continue reading Beware of the IRS and DOL: Four Red Flags They Seek on Form 5500

The duty to provide participants with sufficient information to make consistently informed retirement investment decisions is a basic fiduciary responsibility under ERISA Section 404(a). However, there could be some plan committees who feel their participants are not consistently making prudent decisions. According to a 2016 JP Morgan survey¹ nearly 75 percent of participants say they … Continue reading Is it Time for a Plan Refresh?