Fiduciary Rules and Practices
The latest excessive fee suit targets “wildly excessive compensation,” an allegedly imprudent stable value offering, and the unmonitored use of “float” income.
More specifically, the participant-plaintiffs of Miami, Florida-based Lennar Corp. are raising issues with the recordkeeping/...
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Now that the U.S. Senate has confirmed Lisa Gomez to serve as Assistant Secretary for the Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), a lengthy to-do list awaits her attention.
Since the start of the current administration, Ali Khawar has been serving as Acting...
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A trio of Republican legislators have introduced a bill that would widen the acceptable investment classes in defined contribution plans to, well, pretty much anything—including “digital assets.”
The Retirement Savings Modernization Act was just introduced by U.S. Sens. Pat Toomey (R-PA) and Tim...
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Tech Talk discusses what transferring fiduciary functions means and does not mean.
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There’s an old saying that when you assume…Nevin E. Adams, JD, reminds us in MarketBeat. He continues by offering some assumptions that can create real headaches for retirement plan fiduciaries.
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We don’t know all the particulars yet, but a number of pending excessive fee suits have announced settlements.
In a case of good news, bad news, the pace of excessive fee settlements seems to be accelerating (that would be the bad news), but the size of those same settlements seems to be declining...
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Tech Talk discusses a blog entry that provides a reminder concerning when one is considered a fiduciary and what functions help identify a party as one.
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A case that hinged on the determination of fiduciary status based on control of plan assets—has been decided—again—in favor of the defendants.
The original suit (Rozo v. Principal Life Ins. Co., S.D. Iowa, No. 4:14-cv-00463-JAJ-CFB, 5/12/17), was brought by plaintiff Frederick Rozo[1] on behalf...
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A federal appellate court took another look at an excessive fee case it had dismissed—and found nothing in a recent Supreme Court decision to change its mind.
It was, in fact, the same appellate court (the Seventh Circuit) that had its judgement in the Hughes v. Northwestern University decision in...
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A lawsuit challenging the Labor Department’s subsequent guidance/application of the so-called fiduciary rule has some support from the American Council of Life Insurers (ACLI).
As noted in the filing, the ACLI was one of the lead plaintiffs in the Fifth Circuit decision that vacated the 2016...
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A federal judge has affirmed a $1.5 million judgment against Schlichter Bogard & Denton LLP and Schneider Wallace Cottrell Konecky LLP for their role in bringing a “reckless” excessive fee suit.
Back in September 2020, determining that the decision to pursue litigation was “objectively...
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Despite surveys to the contrary, a new study finds that overall interest in ESG strategies by participants is “relatively weak” and “driven by naïve diversification.”
The difference may, of course, be attributed to the difference between what individuals say—and what they actually do. Unlike...
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Capozzi Adler and Miller Shah have wrested another settlement in an excessive fee suit—in record time.
This time it’s the $1.2 billion Rush University Medical Center 403(b) plan—sued by four former workers just a few months ago (Jan. 21, 2022) who has agreed to settle for $2.95 million—as well as...
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Speaking July 26 at the 2022 NAPA D.C. Fly-In Forum, the Acting Assistant Secretary for the DOL’s Employee Benefits Security Administration outlined key priorities of the department, including finalizing the ESG rule, an update to the fiduciary rule, crypto and cybersecurity.
Ali Khawar, who has...
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A recent appellate court decision warrants a rethink of an excessive fee suit decision—at least that’s the argument being made by the plan fiduciaries.
The suit in question was filed by a group of participant-plaintiffs in the $5.354 billion Humana Retirement Savings Plan (represented by the law...
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After nearly a year of negotiations (though that’s a pretty short turnaound by some measures), the parties in an excessive fee suit have asked for the court’s approval on a settlement agreement struck by the parties.
The plan in question—more specifically the plan fiduciaries—involved are those of...
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Noting that “precedent has overtaken some of the debates in the case,” a federal appellate court has weighed in on an excessive fee case—affirming the rejection of most, but not all, of the plaintiffs’ claims.
The Case
The defendants in this case are the fiduciaries of Cincinnati-based...
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Continuing their two-decade decline, the average expense ratio paid by fund investors fell again last year, Morningstar’s annual U.S. Fund Fee Study reports.
The study, which evaluates trends in the cost of U.S. open-end mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), found that the asset-...
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A federal appellate court has backed the dismissal of an excessive fee suit, rejecting the notion that offering actively managed funds—even those with disappointing performance—by itself doesn’t support allegations of a fiduciary breach.
Interestingly enough, it’s the first such appellate court...
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The fiduciaries of yet another university 403(b) plan have been targeted with litigation—and while the allegations are familiar, the plaintiff’s attorney is new.
The suit—filed against both the fiduciaries (and those that appointed them) of the $1.9 billion Northeastern[1] University 403(b) plan...
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