Retirement benefits

Because alternative investments, such as private equity, hedge funds and real assets, are typically accessed though a limited partnership structure, retirement plan fiduciaries are charged with more extensive due diligence as compared to monitoring daily valued mutual funds or separate accounts.

Financial concerns and readiness for retirement remain top worries for Americans, even as many employers are trying to help by offering financial education benefits.

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.

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

Rising interest rates and strong stock market performance have improved funding ratios for DB plans and created an environment in which plan sponsors can — and are — acting decisively to mitigate risk.

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.

Commentary: With too many choices, the net result is that participants make poorer choices, or simply make no choice, writes blogger Aaron Friedman about one particular retirement vehicle.

The IRS last week issued Notice 2014-19, which sets forth the rules for recognition of same-sex spouses in retirement plan administration. Here's what employers need to know.

Commentary: Required minimum distributions can be tricky. Columnist John Ludwig has tips for advising employees on this topic.

A new PwC survey suggests millennial employees are feeling the pinch more strongly than other workers, and notes that ongoing financial stress can be a tremendous drain on worker productivity and performance – and will be until remuneration begins to match the rapidly increasing cost of living.

MetLife has launched a new voluntary life insurance product aimed at baby boomers nearing retirement.

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.

Commentary: Research shows that the financial services industry remains the least trusted business, according to blogger Jerry Kalish. However, people trust business overall to innovate and change, more than the government. Here’s how you can start to build trust back.

A new study finds that retirement readiness among the baby boomer generation continued its decline in key confidence measurements that look at whether the age cohort was comfortable with covering medical expenses and income needs when they exit the workforce.

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.

Retirement plan sponsors and their consultants are attentively following the Supreme Court today as it hears oral arguments in Fifth Third Bancorp v. Duddenhoeffer, a case that has implications for the retirement plan industry’s fiduciary standard in employee stock ownership plans.

Typically thought of as the employees’ responsibility, plan sponsors should actually facilitate all aspects of required minimum distributions – from alerting participants about them to activating the fund withdrawal.

Overall, state public-sector pension programs continue claw out of the unfunded liabilities that have buried them since the financial collapse, as the total pension debt was over $1 trillion at the close of the fiscal year 2012.

A new analysis finds that retirement coverage in the private sector remains a “serious problem” for plan sponsors and employees despite previously reported high levels of access to retiree options, according to researchers from the Center of Retirement Research at Boston College.

Fewer than a third of plan sponsors measure the effectiveness of their defined contribution plan’s investment offerings by evaluating if projected participant income replacement ratios are being met at retirement, finds a new poll from SEI.