Retirement benefits

Making the choice between TPAs serving as 3(16) fiduciaries or going with retirement planning advice in a 3(21) or 3(38) can help make financial management of a 401(k) plan go more smoothly.

Many companies have frozen their defined benefit plans to new hires. Others have abandoned their pensions in favor of a 401(k) or other defined contribution plan. But not everyone is happy with DC plans because they often leave participants to fend for themselves when most have never had to make investment decisions.

With the Form 5500 deadline fast approaching, 401(k) plan sponsors should be aware of common mistakes that can easily occur when filing the form.

While employees at some of America's most successful businesses do enjoy a healthy range of 401(k) benefits, those working at Facebook, Whole Foods and Amazon.com are not as lucky.

Commentary: Columnist Jerry Kalish discusses the ins and outs of cafeteria plans, which may be seeing a rise in interest due to the ACA.

Retirees should move beyond the long-held “4% Rule” and take into account the full range of financial opportunities and risks they could face going into the golden years.

Learn about how technology can demonstrate the link between volatility and risk in retirement planning — a distinguishing factor from other advisers, according to columnist Craig Davidson.

Employment education sessions are a critical way to get plan participants more involved in the personal choices they need to make to maximize their retirement account returns.

Like other industries, health care employers and benefit plan managers in the health care sector are struggling mightily with their ability to address the retirement preparedness of their evolving workforces.

Commentary: This fall will be a time for plan sponsors to take on additional decisions, as many prototypes sponsors are going through the process of getting their documents updated for the upcoming restatement process. While columnist John Ludwig says this is a necessary process for everyone, he shares decisions that plan sponsors should think about as they go through this process.

When it comes to retirement savings, no family structure is apparently better prepared than same-sex couples without kids, who reported having $276,200 tucked away – the very model of successful workplace savers.

Funding for Social Security Disability Insurance is set to run out by 2016, and if no further action from Congress is taken, SSDI recipients could see a 20% reduction in benefits.

The DOL’s ERISA Advisory Council plans to identify current industry practices and trends regarding the types of employee benefit plan services being outsourced and the market for delivery of those services as part of its 2014 issue agenda.

Better investment returns have given more support to America's once-faltering DB plans, but benefits executives still stay they need to cut costs to deal with health care expenditures.

More than two-thirds of state and local public employees feel confident that they will have enough money to live comfortably in retirement.

Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s single-employer program is improving, but the funding crisis for multiemployer pension plans is not, according to the agency’s fiscal 2013 projection report.

If it “smells like a benefit plan,” you likely have to follow ERISA, said one speaker at the National Association of Health Underwriters annual convention in Scottsdale, Ariz. Here are some general tips benefit advisers need to know about complying with this law, for your clients and their employees alike.

Public HR departments may need to tweak their traditional management and operational techniques to be more in line with the private sector, as tax revenues grow shorter and employees' needs become more complex.

Many employees who change jobs choose to roll their 401(k) accounts into IRAs rather than leaving them in place or rolling them into their new employers 401(k) plan. Rolling a 401(k) account into an IRA is generally a really bad idea, for the following reasons.

Recently, the Internal Revenue Service has focused enforcement activity on examining the implementation of a strong internal control system. The IRS has publicly stated that if a plan is selected for audit the agent will use their evaluation of the plan’s internal controls to determine whether the scope of the examination will be focused or expanded.