"This post considers whether the codification of the practices and procedures requirement newly elevates its importance and suggests a renewed need for plan sponsors to take affirmative steps to satisfy the requirement as a precondition for the confident self-correction of failures that may occur in the future."   MORE >>

"Section 305 significantly expands the ability to self-correct eligible inadvertent failures through EPCRS unless the IRS discovers the violation before the plan takes steps that show a commitment to self-correct that specific failure or the self-correction is not completed within a reasonable period of time. For an error to be considered inadvertent, the plan sponsor satisfies certain standards that generally require that the sponsor have established practices and procedures (formal or informal) in place that are routinely followed and are reasonably designed to comply with IRS requirements."   MORE >>

143 PPT slides. "On December 29, 2022, Congress passed SECURE 2.0, which contained over ninety distinct retirement plan provisions with effective dates ranging from the date of enactment, 2023, 2024, 2025 and beyond.... [This slide deck provides a] SECURE 2.0 Implementation Roadmap ... that breaks this legislation down in a more accessible format."   MORE >>

"SECURE 2.0 offers relief to both the plan sponsor and the affected participants who received an 'inadvertent benefit overpayment.' To be eligible for relief, the error must involve a distribution of funds that were allowed to be in the plan. Distributions of amounts that exceeded a plan limit, such as the maximum elective deferral or the maximum annual addition to a participant's account, are not eligible for this relief."   MORE >>

"The DOL ... Spring Regulatory Agenda ... contains several important retirement plan initiatives for this year. Plan sponsors should be aware of the following items on the DOL's proposed schedule of rulemaking."   MORE >>

"[The authors] estimate that auto-IRA policies increase the probability that an individual works for a firm with an ESRP by roughly 3 percent, and the probability that the individual participates in that ESRP by 33 percent. These policies also increase the number of ESRP participants at the average firm in [the] sample by 3-5 percent."   MORE >>

"Multiple small loans from retirement plan accounts, hardship withdrawals, and student loan debt all correlate with lower retirement contributions. Optional provisions in SECURE 2.0 could reshape workplace financial well?being programs and allow sponsors to tailor plans for their participants. Whether offered in plan or out of plan, access to financial wellness programs could help improve retirement outcomes."   MORE >>

"The suit claimed that the Astellas Defendants 'partnered with Aon Hewitt' to develop a new investment lineup -- one that, with a single exception (T. Rowe Price Health Sciences mutual fund), resulted in the removal of all of the plan's mutual funds (nine in total) and their replacement with six collective investment trusts." [[ Miller v. Astellas US LLC , No. 20-3882 (N.D. Ill. Apr. 13, 2021)]   MORE >>

"Micromanaging plan investments assumes that the members of Congress know more about investments than investment professionals and can determine what should and shouldn't be permissible.... The flexibility in ERISA's prudent investment rule has successfully accommodated the many changes in plan investment offerings over the years ... The original ERISA provisions have stood the test of time because they don't require updating lists or amending the law as circumstances change and trust to the judgment of plan fiduciaries.... If this legislation effectively barring classes of investments is enacted, participants may suffer In the long run."   MORE >>