Retirement benefits

A fiduciary’s decisions around the investment plan menus should be less about what other plans offer, and more about what is in plan participants’ best interests.

Fewer than one in five American workers are contributing to traditional individual retirement accounts, with many pointing to a lack in financial confidence to afford such contributions as one of the biggest reasons for not investing.

A lack of understanding about the benefits of having both an individual retirement account and a 401(k) or 403(b) may help explain why some Americans are not contributing or considering an IRA as part of their retirement strategy.

California's struggling to pay for health care for retired state employees, with an estimated $72 billion in medical costs coming in the next 30 years. Gov. Jerry Brown's solution: Make workers start contributing money to pay for the health care they'll need after retiring.

The funded status of all U.S. multiemployer pension plans dropped from 81% at the end of 2013 to 80% at the end of last year.

Earning less money and a lack of financial knowledge make saving more difficult for women, who are turning to advisers for help, research shows.

Commentary: All retirement plan sponsors should be working with investment advisers who have signed on to their plan as fiduciaries.

Like the Obama administration, agency chair calls for a new regulation that would make brokers put the interests of their clients ahead of their own.

Like the recycling of paper, glass and plastic, the recycling of retirement savings through automated portability benefits everyone and is easy to implement.

The wide range of 401(k) plan fees paid by small plan sponsors and participants might be indicative of the opportunity many such sponsors have to trim those expenses.

How many of your employees will be short of money in retirement if they ignore the prospect of requiring long-term care? Answer: All of them.

Commentary: Follow these formulas to drive participant outcomes as employers look to help employees save for retirement by helping them get to a higher savings rate.

Record stock prices and steadily increasing home values have made U.S. households wealthier as the economic expansion lumbered on.

Commentary: It’s time to start thinking outside the box and considering life insurance and fixed indexed annuities as alternative investments or sub investment classes within fixed income for retirement plans.

While the value of 401(k) retirement savings accounts and IRAs hit a record high of $11.3 trillion at the end of 2013, the average American household isn't sharing in that wealth.

Fidelity Investments has taken over the retirement plans of HanesBrands, which sells apparel under the brands Hanes, Champion, Bali, Playtex and Maidenform.

After nearly 50 years, the American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries and its affiliates have rebranded under a new name, the American Retirement Association.

Commentary: Distant financial needs are rarely addressed by workers on their own, which is why employers should enhance retirement education to make up the deficit.

The 6th Circuit recently reversed Rochow v. Life Ins. Co. of N. America in an en banc opinion. The new decision determined that unless there is a showing that that the remedy for denial of benefits under 502(a)(1)(B) is inadequate to make plaintiff whole, equitable relief under Section 502(a)(3) is unavailable.

Illinois’s remedy for the state’s worst-in- the-nation $111 billion pension-funding shortfall was disliked by lawmakers who voted for it, the new governor who inherited it and public employee unions who sued to void it.