Mary Nell Billings

As I was thinking about a topic to share my "vast" knowledge and information with my benefit peers, it occurred to me just how much I don't know. If it's not regulations and politics yanking our chain, it's the financial markets undoing what we thought we knew historically about trends; it's our employee demographics changing; it's the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation changing rates and the Department of Labor issuing guidance; it's the vendor and consultant landscape changing with mergers or core business focus; and it's the evolution in financial products. So here are the many things I am not:

We all talk about it. We all mean to do it. But redesigning your retirement plan with the needs of women and minorities as a priority is something that takes things most of us just do not have in our quiver of resources - time, money for the match or employer contribution, staff and the data to know what the issue really is for your population so you can make a difference.

Dealing with the increased responsibility plan sponsors face in managing defined benefit plans.

In my last article, I discussed the benefits of reviewing your plan document with the goal of simplifying it ("ERISA and KISS: Strange bedfellows or a marriage made in heaven?" from EBN May). But even if you haven't simplified your plan document, you can begin using the tenet of simplicity for communications to your participants.

Simplicity should be a key goal in plan design, plan objectives and participant communications. Regulations make this challenging, but the benefits of simplicity are many.

You may have been a benefits professional for a long time, but just like spring cleaning, you should review the governance for your benefit plans on a periodic basis.

If you have managed retirement plans, you have managed financial audits on those plans. That is, you should have managed the audits, rather than going along with whatever the finance group and the external auditors had in store for you.