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If you work with a plan in, or with certain connections to, the state of Florida, you may have a compliance problem with your plan loans.An update from Bryan Cave, LLP notes that under its revenue laws, Florida imposes a document tax on loan transactions that are made, signed, executed, issued, or...
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Once a participant has defaulted on a plan loan, can they qualify for an additional loan? What if the defaulted loan has been deemed a distribution and any applicable taxes and penalties have been paid? In this week’s Tech Talk, Ellie Lowder fills us in on whether this is possible.
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While there is room for improvement in 403(b) participation rates, those rates are not as doom-and-gloom as those who market alternatives to 403(b) plan sponsors would like you to believe. In this week’s MarketBeat, Michael Webb explains why it’s a mistake to compare participation rates in 401(k)s...
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Pennsylvania and neighbor to the east New Jersey, no strangers to bracing news regarding the effect of their financially strapped public pension plans, have received yet more tough assessments. And the Keystone State’s neighbor to the west, Ohio, has as well.Fitch announced on Sept. 23 that it cut...
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Americans held $6.6 trillion in all employer-based DC retirement plans on June 30, 2014, of which $941 billion was held in 403(b) plans, and another $255 billion in 457 plans. Those figures are up from $6.4 trillion, $922 billion and $248 billion, respectively, as of March 31, 2014, according to...
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The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on Sept. 24 announced that surviving same-sex spouses of federal annuitants, employees or former employees who died before June 26, 2013 may apply for death benefits. That’s the date of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in U.S. v. Windsor, in which the Court...
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Oregon State Treasurer Ted Wheeler recently presented the legislature with recommendations for increasing Oregonians’ retirement savings, access to a retirement plan and ability to enroll in one. The recommendations are the work of the state’s Retirement Security Task Force, which the legislature...
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Suppose you’re trying to research the attrition rate that TPAs have experienced as a result of fees that are passed on to participants. In this week’s Tech Talk, Ellie Lowder tells us whether there is a benchmark rate prevalent in the industry.
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The DOL has issued numerous fee disclosure rules, including regs under ERISA Section 408(b)(2), to help fiduciaries determine what a “reasonable” fee is. In this week’s MarketBeat. Kimberley Flett and Jeannine Souders discuss what those regulations require of service providers.
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Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) introduced the Secure Annuities for Employee (SAFE) Retirement Act (S. 1270) last year to reform the public and private pension systems and, amid recent retirement reform hearings on Capitol Hill, his public pension reform idea is now getting noteworthy support...
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Public pensions at all levels became healthier in 2013, according to recent studies. Wilshire Consulting’s examinations of state, county and city pension plan funding show that their funding ratio improved last year.Wilshire’s “2014 Report on State Retirement Systems: Funding Levels and Asset...
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The states may serve as laboratories and “try novel social and economic experiments,” wrote U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, and a recent NTSA webcast addressed how they do that regarding retirement systems. In “Public Pensions in Flux? A Review of State Retirement System and Alternatives...
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Washington has been training its eye on fees and transparency for years now. But so is the industry. The North American Securities Administrators Association (NASAA) is the latest organization to convene a group trying to make sure broker-dealers are giving investors fee disclosures they can...
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What are the limits of an employer’s direct pre-tax contributions to an employee’s 403(b) contribution? Is that a limit on the match percentage? In this week’s Tech Talk, Ellie Lowder answers these questions, as well as whether an employer can exclude certain classes of employees from the match.
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It’s only September, but the end of the 2014 plan year is fast approaching. That means more than compiling data for information reporting and preparing for the 2015 plan year — it also means providing notices to defined contribution plan participants before New Year’s Eve. Prudential outlines the...
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The Department of Labor recently issued Field Assistance Bulletin 2014-01 to help plan fiduciaries find missing participants and beneficiaries in terminated defined contribution plans. In this week’s MarketBeat, Linda Segal Blinn, J.D. discusses DOL Field Assistance Bulletin 2014-01, which applies...
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The Garden State is the latest state whose credit rating has suffered due to a pension funding shortfall. Credit agencies have downgraded their ratings of New Jersey debt due to the state’s worsening pension funding ratio.CIO.com reports that Fitch has downgraded New Jersey’s municipal bonds from A...
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The California Controller’s office soon will make information about the state’s approximately 130 public pension systems available on a new website. California Controller John Chiang on Sept. 8 unveiled the site, which provides a wide range of data on city and county finances. The new site...
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The California Controller’s office soon will make information about the state’s approximately 130 public pension systems available on a new website. California Controller John Chiang on Sept. 8 unveiled the site, which provides a wide range of data on city and county finances. The new site...
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The Rhode Island Democratic primary is being touted as more than a way to choose the party’s 2014 gubernatorial candidate — in a sense, reforming the state’s pension system is on the ballot as well. Rhode Island Treasurer Gina Raimondo, who is running for governor, implemented the reform in 2011....
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