Banco Popular de Puerto Rico

Although the Treasury Department recently announced it will allow employees enrolled in flexible spending accounts to roll over $500 of their balance into the next plan year, plan sponsors may want to think twice about allowing rollovers.

What does next year look like for retirement plan sponsors and participants? Here’s an early call on what many experts expect to see.

While carolers may chant joyfully about the holidays being “the most wonderful time of the year,” many workers find themselves singing the blues during the winter months. One in 10 people will experience depression at some time in their lives, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This not only inflicts suffering on individuals and families, it costs employers $44 billion annually in lost productivity.

Older employees with chronic conditions struggle to feel comfortable with health and wellness programs, often displaying an almost teenage-like rebellion against being asked to participate. The trick is to get past the skepticism and demonstrate the benefits of the programs.

Most employer plan sponsors use an investment adviser to help them with their 401(k) plans — a smart decision since most advisers are able to save plan sponsors at least as much as they charge in fees each year. Here's how to tell if you're working with a good one.

Starting January 1, 2014, the Affordable Care Act will dramatically expand the ability of companies to penalize employees for lifestyle issues, including being overweight or smoking, in the name of “wellness incentives.” Overweight and obese employees may now face staggering financial penalties of up to 30% of the cost of their health plan, and up to 50% of the cost of their health plan if they smoke.

As the economy improves, corporate profits increase, and the job market strengthens, employers are getting creative to hold on to key employees, including developing and articulating a distinctive employee value proposition. Retention (and acquisition) requires not only a competitive salary and benefits, but also an array of nonfinancial strategies.

Most, if not all, recent analyses of wellness programs have had a seemingly myopic focus on the impact of wellness on health care costs to the exclusion of these programs' effects on an organization's business and financial outcomes.

401(k) plans may not be the perfect retirement plan vehicle but they do have a number of important attributes that most of us probably take for granted.

Leaders overseeing the launch of the federal health care exchange understood the importance of technology. But they did not understand how to build technology. And that lack of intuitive understanding and respect for the nature of how technology is built led to decisions that doomed the project's launch.