The ERISA attorneys at Ivins, Phillips and Barker recommend these four topics for your next investment committee meeting agenda:   Read More

LPL Financial and Millennium Trust have announced the integration of Millennium Trust’s Automatic Rollover Solution to its Worksite Financial Solutions retirement planning services platform.   Read More

Many people predict that mobile technology will change the DC industry, but very few have specific, breakthrough ideas. Leave it to UCLA professor Shlomo Benartzi to come up with something that addresses the issue of the 78 million Americans without access to a 401(k) plan.   Read More

Responding to a question from an advisor in Indiana, the ERISA consultants at the Columbia Management Retirement Learning Center Resource Desk addressed a common inquiry involving plan loans.   Read More

As we noted last week, we’ve added a new voting tool to the NAPA Net portal so you can help us choose topics for future NAPA webinars. After two weeks, here are the current “standings” in the poll:   Read More

Seeking to resolve an issue that one legal expert claims has been festering for 20 years, the Solicitor General has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a stock drop case in hopes of resolving a judicial split.   Read More

Drinker Biddle’s Oct. 1 webcast, “Surviving DOL Investigations of Plans,” raised so many questions that the firm’s employee benefits group will present a follow-up webcast, “Surviving DOL Investigations of Plans: Part II,” to address those questions and build upon the content from the original webcast.   Read More

When EBRI was founded 35 years ago, I was about six months into a job doing pension accountings for a large Midwestern bank. At the time, I didn’t realize I’d still be working with those kinds of issues in 2013 — in fairness, like most recent college graduates, I wasn’t really thinking about anything that was 35 years in the future.   Read More

In a Dec. 10 webcast that’s free for all NAPA members, top plan advisor Steve Dimitriou from Mayflower Advisors and leading ERISA attorney David Levine from Groom Law Group, Chartered, will discuss best practices on training clients how to manage fiduciary liability and run an effective investment committee.   Read More

Last week’s top five most-read posts on NAPA Net reflected keen interest in the comparison of advisor salaries to other types of financial professionals, NAPA’s updated DC provider list, Morningstar’s new advisor rating system, a new video on Liability Driven Investments and why 401(k) jargon may need a reboot.   Read More

SPX Corp. based in Charlotte, NC, has entered into an annuity buyout contract with MassMutual covering about 16,000 retirees. SPX plans to offer a lump-sum option to 7,500 vested former employees.   Read More

On Nov. 22, 2013, the SEC’s Investment Advisory Committee adopted two recommendations that were proposed by the committee’s Investor-as-Purchaser Subcommittee.   Read More

There are two significant trends in DC investing: the use of traditional glidepath strategies (reducing equity as an investor ages) and the use of mostly cap-weighted passive money management. Both of these movements are challenged in a recent article in The Journal of Retirement.   Read More

If you had to skip NAPA’s inaugural DC Fly-in Forum last September because of a scheduling conflict — or if you want to make sure you return for the second Fly-in — you can now put Sept. 30-Oct. 1 on your 2014 calendar. Those are the just-released dates for next year’s Fly-in. The event will be held at the W Hotel in Washington.   Read More

Pershing announced last week that it is integrating several popular third-party technology applications into its NetX360 platform for advisors.   Read More

It’s becoming increasingly common for older workers to move from a career job to a lower-paying “bridge” job prior to retirement, according to a University of Michigan Retirement Research Center study. A big reason for the increase in this kind of “partial retirement”: higher unemployment.   Read More

Every six months we update our list of DC providers (record keepers and DCIO firms) and broker dealers. Though there have not been any major shifts, there are more subtle changes that might indicate the direction of the providers specifically and the market in general. Here are some comments on changes we have seen since our last update in May 2013:   Read More

Jim Phillips, a plan advisor in Massachusetts and contributor to The Wall Street Journal’s Marketwatch site, calls the DC industry on the carpet for the confusing jargon we use when dealing with plan participants and sponsors. And he’s not talking about Monte Carlo simulations or hedging tail risk — he’s talking about really simple terms that we might assume everyone understands. For example:   Read More

An annual retirement survey by BlackRock polls plan sponsors about their beliefs, attitudes and concerns in three major areas of opportunity for tapping the full potential of DC plans, clarifying key retirement concerns and driving better savings behavior.   Read More

A new study from the Insured Retirement Institute (IRI) looks at the changing retirement strategies of same-gender couples in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Windsor decision earlier this year. That decision led to the IRS and DOL adopting a uniform definition of “spouse” that includes legally married, same-gender couples, regardless of their current state of residence — effectively expanding pension rights for millions nationwide.   Read More