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Retirement Plan Account Manager
Billings and Company, Inc.
in ANY STATE

Defined Contribution Client Manager
Milliman
in CA

Retirement Plan Account Manager
Alerus Financial (Alerus Retirement Solutions)
in MI

Retirement Plan Administrator/Consultant
Law Offices of R. David Danziger, P.C.
in PA

Plan Administrator
BlueStar Retirement Services
in FL

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Understanding Benefits Subject to Health Care Reform: Staying Within the Exceptions for Health FSAs, HRAs, Dental/Vision, EAPs, and More
February 20, 2014 WEBCAST
(Thomson Reuters / EBIA)

Private Health Insurance Exchanges for Large Employers - What You Need to Know
February 26, 2014 WEBCAST
(Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP)

HCR Update: Final Employer Mandate Regulations
February 28, 2014 WEBCAST
(HUB International)

Understanding Consumer Expectations in the Transforming Benefits Landscape
March 13, 2014 WEBCAST
(Benefitfocus)

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Continuing Ed Material for IRS EP Personnel: Compensation Definition under Qualified Retirement Plans (PDF)
50 pages; dated Summer 2013. Excerpt: "Compensation is used for many different purposes in qualified retirement plans. In this chapter, we will describe and compare the different definitions of compensation that are required or permitted to be used for various plan purposes. The chapter will also provide helpful examples which will show how we apply these definitions and safe harbors during an audit or determination review." (Internal Revenue Service)

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Avoid common pitfalls of calculating RMDs!

Join Charles Lockwood, J.D., LL.M., for an in-depth discussion of the Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) rules, March 20th. Click here to sign-up today!

Continuing Ed Material for IRS EP Personnel: Defined Benefit Floor-Offset Arrangements and Other Plan Designs (PDF)
74 pages; dated Summer 2013. "At the end of this chapter, you will be able to: [1] Explain how floor-offset plans operate, including cash balance plans; [2] Determine if the floor-offset plan language is correct; [3] Determine if a floor-offset plan satisfies coverage and meaningful benefit requirements; and [4] Understand the top-heavy rules." (Internal Revenue Service)

Continuing Ed Material for IRS EP Personnel: Related Employers (PDF)
94 pages; dated Summer 2013. "At the end of this chapter, you will be able to: [1] Identify whether a controlled group exists: as within a parent-subsidiary group, as within a brother-sister group; [2] Identify and determine whether an affiliated service group exists: as between a First Service Organization and an A-Organization, or as between a First Service Organization and a B-Organization, or, as involved with a Management Group. From these identifications, you will be able to determine how these relationships affect the status of qualified plans maintained by the entities involved, by knowing which source and submission documents are needed for these evaluations." (Internal Revenue Service)

Beyond Diversification: The Pervasive Problem of Excessive Fees and 'Dominated Funds' in 401(k) Plans
"In 16% of analyzed plans, ... for a young worker, the fees charged in excess of an index fund entirely consume the tax benefit of investing in a 401(k) plan.... [A]pproximately 52% of plans have menus offering at least one ['dominated' menu fund ... where the costs of fees in holding the fund so outweigh the benefits of additional diversification that rational investors would not invest in these assets] ... [The authors] recommend that [1] the requirements for default fund allocations be enhanced to assure that the default investment is reasonably low cost ... [2] the [DOL] designate certain plans as 'high cost' and mandate that participants in these plans be given the option to execute in-service rollovers to low-cost plans.... [3] participants be required to demonstrate a minimum degree of sophistication by passing a DOL-approved test before being allowed to invest in any funds that would not satisfy the enhanced default requirement." (Ian Ayres, Yale Law School and Yale School of Management, and Quinn Curtis, University of Virginia School of Law)

SOA Public Pension Panel Recommends Improved Financial Management, Increased Disclosures and Stronger Actuarial Standards (PDF)
"The panel's report lays out three principles of an effective public pension funding program: [1] The costs of future retirement benefits should be pre-funded, and funded in a way that targets 100% funding of plan obligations.... [2] Taxpayers receiving the benefit of today's public employees' services should pay the taxpayer portion of the costs of those employees' pension benefits; funding programs should restrain the tendency to shift these costs to future generations of taxpayers. [3] While the panel believes that stable costs will be difficult to achieve, it does recognize the benefits that predictable costs can bring to the sponsor's budgeting processes over short periods of time." [Available documents: Resource Guide , Summary of Recommendations , and Full Report .] (Society of Actuaries)

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Feb. 26 Webinar -- Private Health Insurance Exchanges for Large Employers

We will discuss the Mechanics of private exchanges for large employers; benefits and potential drawbacks of private exchanges; legal implications of private exchanges - what we know and what you should know when talking to private exchange providers.

Text of Amicus Brief Addressing Treatment of Inherited Retirement Accounts in Bankruptcy (PDF)
"[C]ertain types of accounts, such as IRAs, are taxed in a manner to encourage individuals to save funds in those accounts for retirement ... [I]nherited IRAs are taxed in precisely the opposite manner from IRAs.... [I]nherited IRAs are better characterized as anti-retirement funds: they are structured so as to require immediate consumption of the funds rather than to promote future savings. Accordingly, they are not 'retirement funds' under the Bankruptcy Code." [Clark v. William J. Rameker, Trustee, et al., No. 13-299, on appeal from the 7th Circuit.] (Prof. Seymour Goldberg; brief prepared by Jenner & Block)

Less Than 30% of Insurers Confident Their Investment Operations Infrastructure Will Meet Future Challenges
"Insurers in the United States will be required to comply with the Dodd-Frank Act while European insurers will be required to comply with the Solvency II directive. These regulations will increase demands for products to help manage compliance requirements, monitor risk management and report on investment performance. Of the survey respondents, 50 percent cited their current systems as 'customized with obsolete code' and the vast majority of respondents expect that up to a quarter of their staff will retire within the next five years." (Northern Trust)

Partner with a Professional Retirement Plan Advisor and Achieve Higher Participant Retirement Readiness Scores (PDF)
"A fundamental research study of 400 employers that sponsor a 401(k) or 403(b) plan found that sponsors who partner with a Professional Retirement Plan Advisor enjoy superior outcomes in many areas. In particular, partnering with a Professional Retirement Plan Advisor entirely dedicated to retirement plans helps plan sponsors enhance the retirement readiness of employees." (Retirement Advisor Council)

Rewriting Retirement Readiness: Will the USA Retirement Funds Act Amend Your Plan?
"MyRA provides for a supplement to the current retirement system; the Retirement Security Act would modify it; the USA Retirement Funds Act would profoundly alter it. How? ... [All] employers with 10 or more employees would be required to offer a retirement plan with automatic enrollment and a lifetime income option." (Milliman Retirement Town Hall)

The Importance of Being Earnest: Implications of Saving, Investing and Future Policy Changes on Today's Retirement Investor (PDF)
"Many Americans live for two to three decades after they retire. Without adequate planning, some may struggle to create sufficient savings and post-retirement income and suffer declines in lifestyle. This paper examines post-retirement dynamics for median income families that are heavily affected by the availability and use of qualified retirement plans, the balance between savings and consumption, and the level of portfolio risk they choose over time." (J.P. Morgan Asset Management)

SEC's Mary Jo White's Top Priority: Uniform Fiduciary Standard
"'We will intensify our consideration of the question of the role and duties of investment advisers and broker-dealers, with the goal of enhancing investor protection,' Ms. White said ... [She later] said that she wants the five SEC commissioners to come to a conclusion on whether to implement a uniform fiduciary standard for investment advice and to decide whether to harmonize regulations that govern investment advisers and brokers." (InvestmentNews)

Huge CalSTRS Funding Hole Grew for 10 Years
"Getting CalSTRS back to full funding, if rates are steadily increased over the next half dozen years, would take an annual increase reaching more than $5 billion a year by 2020 ---about what the state general fund currently spends on UC and CSU combined.... The analyst's four preliminary scenarios, based on CalSTRS estimates presented to the board earlier this month, begin with increased payments of $900 million to $1.8 billion next fiscal that increase to $5.7 billion to $5.3 billion in fiscal 2020-21." (Calpensions)

A Search for Intelligent Life in the Active Equity Management Universe (PDF)
38 pages. Excerpt: "[O]ver the last five years, the chance of picking outperforming managers has been well over 50% in many investment styles ... Trailing five- and seven-year periods include the financial crisis and global recession, a time during which pairwise stock correlations rose and created greater challenges for some (but not all) investment styles ... [F]or some investment styles, active manager performance has been strongest when overall market returns are weak or rising in single digits ... [The authors] find no evidence that manager outperformance is systematically influenced by the size of a manager's fund." (J.P. Morgan Asset Management)

Detroit Bankruptcy Plan Includes Deep Pension Cuts, Eliminates COLAs
"In the plan, which probably will be amended in the weeks ahead, police, firefighters and those departments' retirees will take a 10% cut to their current pension payment. The pensions of all other city employees and retirees will be cut more than three times as much: 34%. Neither group will receive cost of living adjustments in the future." (Los Angeles Times)

Post-Bankruptcy Detroit to Keep Defined Benefit Pension Plan
"A post-bankruptcy Detroit will maintain a defined benefit pension plan for more than 9,300 current city employees, as it has for decades ...[Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr] is hopeful state officials will provide the missing $350 million piece of the funding puzzle to help cover pension fund liability for roughly 22,000 retirees -- over and above the $370 million to come from private foundations and $100 million that a privately managed Detroit Institute of Arts expects to raise from donors over the next 20 years." (Crain's Detroit Business)

Survey of Executive Retirement Benefit Practices
"On average, executive benefit plans deliver an additional 5% to 7% of earnings in annual retirement income to a mid-level executive. About half of organizations that sponsor employer-paid nonqualified plans offer only pure restoration executive benefits." (Towers Watson)

Following Supreme Court, District Court Upholds Plan's Limitations Period Measured from Before Claim Denial
"The [District Court in Alabama] emphasized that the equities in this case favored the insurer since the insurer had complied with ERISA's claims regulations and the participant did not explain why, even after receiving written notice of her right to obtain, free of charge, documents relevant to her claim, she waited more than four years to request a copy of the insurance policy. But the court also expressed some reservations about a rule that could prevent 'reasonable' beneficiaries from seeking judicial review because they did not receive actual notice of the plan's deadline and admonished that the 'cautious approach might well embrace a notice that explains not only that the courthouse door is open but also how quickly the courthouse door will close'[.]" [ Wilson v. Standard Ins. Co. , No. 4:11-CV-02703-MHH (N.D. Ala. Jan. 31, 2014)] (Thomson Reuters / EBIA)

AHIP Statement on New Proposed Cuts to Medicare Advantage America?s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP)

Newton Strategy Group Launches Study on Benefits Administration Trends And Technologies Newton Strategy Group

LIMRA Secure Retirement Institute: Total Annuity Sales Grow 17 Percent in Fourth Quarter LIMRA

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