Retirement

A pension expert panned federal lawmakers’ efforts to increase oversight of state and local governments’ public pension plans.

With the equity markets’ recent woes in the past, variable annuity sales perked up in 2010, according to the Insured Retirement Institute in Washington, D.C.

While retirement confidence levels are low, employees are showing that they’re taking steps to financially recover from the 2008 recession and that they understand the importance of planning for the future, according to a new research report from Financial Finesse, a provider of workplace financial education.

Payroll and benefits outsourcing provider Paychex has acquired online 401(k) administrator ePlan Services.

Worries about the future of Social Security and Medicare, as well as the experience of the last market crash in 2008-2009 and the housing slump, have left an increasing number of Americans worried about whether they will have adequate resources to provide for their retirement years, which makes them more open to financial advice.

The vast majority of U.S. benefits managers reported that their organizations do not do enough to help employees make critical decisions at the point of retirement, according to new survey commissioned by Transamerica Retirement Management.

Retirement plan participants who don’t own a long-term care insurance policy and instead choose to self-insure for any LTCI needs in the future run the risk of seeing their life savings decimated by major medical expenses, cautions Jonas Roeser, senior vice president of marketing and operations for LTC Financial Partners LLC.

Our clients often ask us to define who in their organizations are fiduciaries to their retirement plans and exactly what it means to be a fiduciary. Many times, our clients are surprised by the answers that they get. You may be as well.

In all sectors of the financial services industry, there is an almost maniacal quest for "alpha," or performing above the norm. Careers, fortunes and even companies are made or broken on their ability to deliver alpha.

With millions of baby boomers on the brink of retirement and the effects of the economic meltdown in 2008 that left many employees with depleted 401(k) account balances, helping employees manage their money into retirement is a growing concern for employers.Once employees make the move from accumulating to drawing down their assets, the focus shifts from maximizing the growth rate of those assets to maximizing the ability to sustain income from them over long periods of time.