Financial planning

As retirement confidence among employees remains low, small business owners and their workforces may even be less prepared due to the scarcity of formal retirement education and established retirement savings plans to help this demographic.

Knowing all sides of a client’s benefits plan helps both retirement and health benefit consultants make better recommendations.

The nation’s largest corporate defined benefit pension plans continue to experience woes as their collective funding statuses dwindle due to unsavory interest rates.

A relatively small number of easily fixable problems can make a big difference in many 401(k) plans. Check out this list from EBN's retirement blogger Robert Lawton to see if your 401(k) plan can be improved.

Amid today’s rapidly changing benefits landscape, employers are increasingly called to become more informed plan fiduciaries overseeing decisions about their plan’s qualified default investment alternatives. Three main components hold particular importance to help employers make reasonable QDIA decisions and fulfill ERISA obligations.

The IRS last week announced new adjustments for retirement plans, including for 401(k) deferrals, contributions and benefits, and the amount of compensation counted for plan purposes beginning in 2015. Here’s what you and your employer clients need to know.

As more and more employers analyze their ever-growing pension obligations, Boeing and Hartford Financial Services Group are the latest companies to use the lump-sum payment tactic to limit their liabilities.

As active employees move into a retiree population, health care decision-making also changes. Some companies provide a subsidy to the retiree population for purchasing health care on their own, but the tracking of that subsidy and the associated premiums create stress on an already overworked HR department.

Benefit brokers say employers are more and more looking toward financial wellness programs to assist employees saddled with increased health care costs.

A passive portfolio management approach is appropriate for many 401(k) plan participants and individual investors. But indexing isn’t right for everyone.

Knowing the client, using the best medium and avoiding industry jargon are a few ways to discuss retirement plans with clients.

Third-party administrators need to use a variety of methods to ensure employers supply the correct data.

Thanks to new cost-of-living adjustments, the Internal Revenue Service is allowing the American workforce to save a bit more in their retirement plans next year.

Employer clients acting as the fiduciary of a benefit plan may often seek the advice of their trusted adviser. ERISA recognizes that need but also disallows the misuse of an expert. So what qualifies as misuse?

Volatility has returned to the equity markets with a vengeance. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has fluctuated by hundreds of points on many recent trading days. During these times your 401(k) plan participants can become very nervous.

With companies granting over $110 billion in equity each year to employees, the stakes are very high for employers to demonstrate a strong return on investment from their equity compensation plans. And yet, there appears to be a disconnect in how these companies and their employees perceive equity awards.

The Pension Protection Act of 2006 has helped to reduce costs and limit liabilities for multiemployer plans. But the landmark legislation will sunset at the end of the year, which has many stakeholders and consultants predicting future retirement uncertainty for the more than 10 million participants in multiemployer plans across the nation.

The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear Tibble v. Edison International, a case in which the plaintiffs contend their ERISA plan fiduciaries breached their duty of prudence by offering higher-cost retail-class mutual funds to 401(k) plan participants, even though identical lower-cost institutional-class mutual funds were available.

With more confusion swirling in the employer 401(k) market – not to mention an American workforce with staggeringly low retirement confidence – advisers and consultants recommend employers play a bigger role as a fiduciary when considering administration fees and investment education.

Commentary: On Friday, September 26, Bill Gross, the portfolio manager of the PIMCO Total Return Bond Fund, left the company for another job. Many financial advisers, including me, believe that his departure is a positive for the Fund and PIMCO. Why is this important to you as a retirement plan sponsor?