Financial planning

A recent revenue ruling from the Treasury Department and the IRS eases the administrative burden for 401(k) plan sponsors wanting to accept rollovers from other employers’ plans, but the fiduciary risk posed by inactive accounts still remains.

The life insurance and annuities market continues to grow, but advisers hoping to capitalize on that will first need to meet the challenges of a diversifying U.S. population.

Recently Senator Marco Rubio, a 2016 Republican presidential hopeful, shared his thoughts on reforming America's retirement system. Blogger Robert C. Lawton rates Rubio's proposals on a scale of one to five.

A speech from the senator has drawn fire from one industry group that says it's a threat to retirement advisers and the American people.

Commentary: Columnist John Ludwig says there's no "silver bullet" to solving all employers' financial wellness problems, but looking at certain demographic factors of your group is a good place to start.

Connecticut legislators have approved the creation of a new board to study the feasibility of creating of a public retirement plan for private sector workers in the state who don’t have access to an employer-sponsored plan.

Females are more empowered than ever to steer families financially, but there’s still catch-up work for advisers to do in getting them to save for their later years.

American workers are increasingly satisfied with their retirement plans and interested in investing in them, a trend advisers and employers use in their favor.

Start by constructing an employee education policy statement for your 401(k) and 403(b) plans. Many plan sponsors never put together this document and, as a result, have no idea if they are achieving any worthwhile education objectives.

If errors occur with these retirement savings tactics, it could be very costly to your employer clients.

More and more, companies which have integrated auto-enrollment and auto-escalation features into the retirement plan design are producing impressive participation and savings rates, more in line with the targets that will result in the kinds of 401(k) balances participants will need in retirement.

In an effort to make workplace retirement savings more portable and to help build assets in tax-qualified retirement plans, the Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service have removed a cumbersome step plan sponsors must take when accepting rollovers from other employers’ plans.

Benefit advisers need to know how these two long-awaited guidance notices from the IRS will affect their employer clients.

Why trusted advisers should be sharing this growing retirement income strategy with their clients.

By getting employees more directly engaged in their own financial well-being – educating them on their benefits, helping them make the right retirement planning decisions and learning how to tackle financial stress by addressing their own debt and their worries over health care costs – employers are seeing lower turnover and increased productivity.

A new study shows that people in the workplace have a greater sense of urgency around improving their finances, with 23% reporting high or overwhelming financial stress in 2013 compared to 18% in 2012.

Are your retirement plan fees market-competitive? Fees don't necessarily have to be the lowest cost, but they do need to be reasonable.

How does your investment fund line-up compare to the market? Do you have too many investment options or too few? Regular blogger Robert C. Lawton outlines some best practices with regard to investment menus.

Wondering whether your plan design is still market competitive? Leading-edge 401(k) and 403(b) plans have the following plan design features in common.

As hopeful evidence that a half-decade of retirement savings doldrums may finally be over, a new examination of employee 401(k) participation suggests workers are back on the savings path – and increasingly using HSAs as a new form of long-term financial planning.