Retirement benefits

Plan design plays a significant role in the success of a 401(k) plan, and there are opportunities for design to be catered to better suit employee needs and retirement objectives.

Commentary: As open enrollment season moves into full swing, columnist John Ludwig turns your focus to financial wellness, a growing concern for employers.

The wisdom of offering 401(k) loans has long been debated, with some arguing that allowing them is an incentive for employees to participate in the plan, while others believe they do more harm than good since employees often reduce or stop saving in their 401(k) plan after taking a loan from it.

Preparing Americans for retirement is at the forefront of priorities for lawmakers and industry, as putting off saving for retirement for even a few years will woefully shortchange employees in their golden years.

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.

The Supreme Court did not appear overly supportive of the so-called Yard-Man presumption during arguments this week in M&G Polymers USA, LLC v. Tackett.

The funded status of some multiemployer pension plans has not seen any drastic improvements since the great recession. But now, as proposals lurk in Congress to eliminate pension liabilities and improve the overall insolvency of these plans, there may be changes on the horizon.

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.

As the retirement system steadily moves away from guaranteed pensions to more individualized retirement accounts, longevity annuities are adding to the financial security of retirees.

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.

U.S. parents are more and more finding themselves providing financial support to adult children, undermining their readiness to successfully put enough away for retirement.

A slew of recent class-action lawsuits on the part of retirement plan participants have made plan sponsors and benefits managers fearful of some serious financial implications for fiduciary breaches.

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.

Commentary: The kind of intense research that goes into, say, a television purchase is missing from a major market—and retirement advisers should take notice of this opportunity.

The embattled California city has negotiated a deal to exit bankruptcy without neglecting its obligations to the state's public employee retirement system, avoiding a $1.6 billion termination fee.

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.

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

The number of employees participating in employer-based retirement plans increased in 2013 for the first time in several years, pointing to a national economy slowly mending itself and an increasing employment rate in the aftermath of the recession, the Employee Benefit Research Institute says.

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