401(k)

Upfront information, auto features and tailoring communication and education specific to younger employees can help boost participation.

Commentary: As the boomer generation moves further into traditional retirement years, evolving employee expectations are altering the benefits landscape more significantly than at any other time in recent history.

Even when plan fiduciaries hire outside service providers to manage the 401(k) plan, they still maintain fiduciary responsibility for certain functions.

Participation in employer-sponsored 401(k) plans has slowly crept up over the past decade, in large part because of actions taken by plan sponsors.

Commentary: If the objective of the Chamber of Commerce’s study on the DOL’s proposed fiduciary rules was to scare small business owners, clearly it succeeded. But it certainly failed on another level.

Generalists and small-market plan sponsors are likely to be the most negatively affected, according to a retirement conference panel.

Expanding the electronic options for delivering required financial information to 401(k) plan participants could benefit both employers and employees, but Department of Labor and IRS rules often conflict about when employers can use electronic communication for their retirement plans.

While employers may recognize that the amount of time employees will spend in retirement is growing, people around the world fail to reflect this trend in their long-term financial planning.

Commentary: This practice may be eliminating opportunities for investors to purchase products which could greatly improve the emotional and financial well-being of the client in their retirement.

Although they still amount to little more than a blip on the radar screen, income guarantee arrangements incorporated into defined contribution plans are growing rapidly in popularity.

Low-cost lending and credit-establishment services emerge as a new benefit to help employees make better financial decisions.

Defined contribution plan sponsors remain in regulatory limbo regarding their obligations to maintain detailed documentation surrounding employee 401(k) hardship withdrawals.

In Tibble v. Edison, the Supreme Court did not expound on what a retirement plan fiduciary's duty to monitor entails, which is a bone of contention for ERISA attorneys and 401(k) plan sponsors.

Fiduciary responsibility requires the careful selection of default retirement investments. Benefit advisers can add value with knowledgeable advice on qualified default investment alternatives, including through the use of selection tools.

Although 401(k) plan participation is increasing, employees are not actively managing their accounts.

Conflicting beneficiary designations for 401(k) plan assets can be tough to sort out when a plan participant dies.

Trust and education are some of the more favorable characteristics sought in retirement plan providers, as well as key drivers to increasing employee engagement. However, that education is lacking, as most employees have a poor understanding of retirement language.

The surge of small 401(k) account balances is the result of a perfect storm — increasing rates of adoption for automatic enrollment combined with the high frequency of job changes observed in today’s mobile workforce.

DC plan sponsors that take pains to secure competitive institutional pricing for their retirement plans’ investment services to maximize retirement savings for active employees may also have an incentive to do so for retirees.

The recent Supreme Court decision in Tibble v. Edison, though largely favorable to plaintiffs, does contain one silver lining for plan sponsors.