Employee benefits

President Barack Obama named Thomas Perez, an assistant U.S. attorney general, as his choice for labor secretary in his second term. Perez would replace Hilda Solis, ensuring that the Labor Department is led again by a Hispanic, helping the president maintain diversity in his cabinet. Solis resigned in January.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation reports that shifting its enforcement policy away from companies unlikely to default on their pensions benefited about 50 businesses by almost $1 billion since the start of a pilot program announced in November.

Last week Richard Stolz in his article, Red Alert for Fiduciaries on Plan Financial Reports properly noted that plan fiduciaries are more vulnerable than ever on a number of compliance matters, including the financial statements included with their 5500 filings.

In a legislative session sponsored by the Society for Human Resource Management, benefits attorney Elizabeth Vollmar covered everything from in-house administration functions to avoiding financial exposure.

A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction on PPACA’s contraception requirement, saying an employer’s First Amendment rights could be irreparably harmed if the mandate was enforced while a lawsuit was pending.

Despite the progress made through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on health care access, there are challenges to come from health reform, said Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wisc.) Thursday at the AHIP National Policy Forum in Washington.

Ford Motor Co., while moving to close a growing deficit in its pension, will shift more of its plan’s assets to fixed income to shield against changes in interest rates.

The experts all seem to agree: 401(k) plans should be set up to automatically distribute small ($5K or less) balances of former employees into IRAs using well established safe harbor procedures.

More than 78% of plan sponsors are planning to maintain their offerings of stable value funds, according to the MetLife 2013 Stable Value Study

California should force state workers to use up their vacation time rather than bank it until retirement, the Legislative Analyst’s Office said after finding the cost to taxpayers has reached a historic high.

The Los Angeles Fire and Police Pension System, with about $15.7 billion in assets, is allocating about $785 million for commodities, its first investment in the asset class.

In most surveys, average defined benefit portfolios are found to outperform the average defined contribution plan account. And while that was true in Callan Associates latest “Callan DC Index” report, one category of target date fund -- 2030 funds -- performed markedly better last year than both overall DC plan assets and DB plans, presumably due to a higher average equity allocation.

Under current guidance, “affordable” health care coverage for a family could get unaffordable fairly quickly, but is total household income even an issue for employers?

Governors who refuse to expand their Medicaid programs for the poor may cost employers in their states as much as $1.3 billion in federal fines, according to a new study.

Air Canada stock gained the most in a week after the carrier reached an agreement with the Canadian federal government to extend a cap on pension funding by seven years, vividly demonstrating the impact of pension obligations and the price of publicly traded sponsor’s common stock shares.

A new nationwide public opinion research report produced by the National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS) finds overwhelming support for Congressional action to provide all Americans with access to a new type of privately run pension plan.

Last week the Dow Jones Industrial Average reached record highs. Many expect the Standard & Poor's 500, a broader market index, to follow the Dow's lead soon. Is this a time to consider committing significantly to U.S. equities, or a time to take profits?

The increased accounts and balances were expected in a recent EBRI/MGA survey, but other analysts’ predictions are being confounded. For example, no real correlation was found between account balance and healthy behaviors.

Plan fiduciaries are more vulnerable than ever on a lot of legal and regulatory fronts, including the financial statements included with their 5500 filings. In an era when 5500 forms and their attachments quickly enter the public domain online via E-fast 2, available to anyone -- including an enlarged army of DOL inspectors hunting for anomalies, “fiduciaries need to be on the top of their game,” warns Dave Dacey, CPA, a partner with the WithumSmith+Brown and leader of the firm’s Employee Benefit & Pension Plans Group.

New Jersey’s public pension deficit swelled 13% to $47.2 billion in fiscal 2012 as the state continued to make partial contributions to its retirement plans.