Employer Strategies

From January to April 15, Steve Lerner rarely saw his spouse while working at an accounting firm. When he started his new role at consultancy Accenture nearly 10 years ago, all that changed, and he got the work-life flexibility he badly wanted

Employers maintaining qualified retirement plans are generally required to file an annual Form 5500 regardless of the number of participants in the plan, except for one-participant plans with less than $250,000 in assets.

While most companies go through their annual renewal process in the fall, at Ambrose we are wrapping it up and heading into open enrollment for an Aug. 1 effective date. For us, as well as other employers with renewals that fall in the middle of the year, health care reform regulations haven't kicked in until now

It was about seven years ago that a client of Matt McQuide approached the vice president at Benefit Controls Companies with a serious, if not uncommon, problem. The 1,000-employee textile firm was experiencing unsustainable rate increases of at least 9% to 11% a year. "They looked at us and said, 'If this continues, we won't have a business,'" McQuide recalls.

The job of being a retirement plan fiduciary may soon be a more lonely experience. Or maybe it will just seem that way under the Department of Labor's 408(b)(2) regulations. Earlier this year, the agency extended the compliance date for the new disclosure rules under ERISA section 408(b)(2) from July 16, 2011, to Jan. 1, 2012, meaning retirement plan service providers have more time to prepare before they are required to disclose to plan sponsors that they are indeed acting as a plan fiduciary. Further, the extension pushes back the transition rule for providing initial disclosures from 60 days after the effective date to 120 days after the effective date. Thus, for calendar-year plans, initial disclosures don't need to be made until April 30, 2012.

Each year, benefits professionals around the country spend months determining the plan of action for the next year's health care. Numbers are crunched. Alternatives are explored. Numbers are crunched again. Finally, all of the information is compiled and presented to the executive team. While we don't think of it as presenting a business case, that is essentially what we do each year - and we can learn a lot from our peers in marketing, product development and finance about building an effective business case.

Faced with the current challenges brought on by the financial crisis, company priorities have been forced to shift, and employees are often left with a lack of understanding and insufficient guidance on their benefits choices at work.

With two Harry Potter fans still living at home, our family couldn't wait to visit The Wizarding World of Harry Potter last week while on vacation in Orlando, Fla. Our family of four "muggles" whizzed around on broomsticks, played Quidditch and drank delicious butter beers in this land of magic and illusion at Universal Studios.

Expensive new cancer drugs, treating increasing numbers of patients, could drive cancer drug spending by as much as 15% a year through 2013, according to the 2011 Medco Drug Trend Report, which tracks drug utilization and spending.

Although both fixed indemnity and expense incurred limited medical plans continue to be impacted by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, fixed indemnity plans are weathering the storm relatively intact, while the expense incurred structure has taken a beating, experts say. Fixed-indemnity plans do not have to comply with PPACA regulations because they do not mimic major medical insurance policies as expense incurred plans do.