What can you do if your retirement plan operations don’t square with the provisions of your plan document?

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa granted Bankers Trust’s motion for summary judgment. In doing so, the court determined that the language of the Release was so broad that it included ERISA claims, and that Bankers Trust was protected by the Release as a person “acting on behalf of” Telligen stockholders.

Service providers for 401(k) and other retirement plans require access to personal data on participants including name, age, address, date of hire, compensation and possibly social security number. This data is necessary to allow plan administrators and recordkeepers to properly allocate plan contributions and earnings to individual participant accounts, to prepare participant statements and for income tax reporting purposes.

Retirement plan retention requirements are pretty clear. The retention lapses that do occur both in the Estate of Barton case and in our experience usually result from business acquisitions where the acquiring business either does not receive or fails to retain the “forever” records of the acquired entity. So, any due diligence checklist in a business acquisition should contain a detailed inquiry about the target’s “forever” records. And yes, you can retain your own forever records electronically in accordance with applicable Department of Labor regulations.

Legislative concerns about 401(k) participants who are financially unprepared for retirement has resulted in a number of specific provisions intended to encourage participants to save more. Those provisions include tax credits for small businesses that include automatic enrollment provisions in their 401(k) plans, expanded availability of multiple employer plans, 401(k) eligibility for tenured part-time employees, postponed start date for required minimum distributions from age 70½ to 72, and penalty free participant withdraws of up to $5,000.00 upon the birth or adoption of a child.

Roughly one in six emergency room or hospital visits results in surprise billing, although the odds vary significantly depending on where you live. Such charges can be significant as the out-of-network doctor typically charges a full “list price” for services. Consumer bankruptcies have resulted because in some cases surprise billing has amounted to tens of thousands of dollars.

The Department of Labor issued guidance in mid-2018 which allowed employer associations to adopt a single multiple employer health plan to cover a greater number of employers and their employees. These Association Health Plans (or “AHPs”) were intended to allow more smaller employers and self-employed individuals to band together in order to secure simpler health plan arrangements and cheaper coverage in the marketplace (our February Benefits Bulletin provides some of the details here).

The Illinois Secure Choice Savings Program requires employers with at least 25 Illinois employees to set up a state-sponsored IRA based retirement program if they do not already have a retirement plan. Although the program is funded solely by payroll contributions from employees, subject employers must go through an online registration and enrollment process, forward payroll contributions to the program custodian and provide program information to employees.

Department of Labor proposed regulations would allow certain employers (including employer groups or associations) and business owners with no employees to share a single 401(k) plan. This arrangement would transfer administrative and compliance responsibility to the sponsor of the retirement plan under a multiple employer plan, or “MEP.”

In McLain v. Poppell, it was alleged that Dr. Poppell, owner of the Emerald Coast Eye Clinic and trustee of its 401(k) plan with total investment discretion, invested plan assets primarily in VirnetX, a publicly traded company whose principal business was acting as a “patent troll” (a company that acquires patents and uses them primarily to sue other businesses for alleged patent infringement).