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Americans held $6.586 trillion in employer-based DC retirement plans on June 30, 2014, of which $4.435 trillion was held in 401(k) plans. Those figures are up from $6.357 trillion and $4.265 trillion, respectively, as of March 31, 2014, according to the Investment Company Institute (ICI). A year...
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Nationwide Financial has added an automatic rebalancing feature to its Investment Solutions Builder (ISB) tool. With the new feature, advisors can now rebalance asset allocation models on a quarterly, semi-annual, annual or date-specific basis. ISB is an online investment tool that enables...
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What do most small businesses (and even bigger ones) want from their benefits and retirement plans? The answer is nothing — no cost, work or liability. A new online benefits company, Zenefits, is delivering nothing and collecting the hefty fee that a health care broker would otherwise...
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We’re now about a month away from the announcement of the 2015 limits — but not so far away that we can’t speculate. The annual cost of living adjustments (COLAs) for most limits are measured using the CPI-U announced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for July, August and September. Those...
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AllianceBernstein has announced three new hires to its defined contribution team: Mark Brown, managing director for DC products, is responsible for supporting DC business development activities through the firm's institutional sales force. He will report to Richard Davies, senior...
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Roughly 6,800 American companies have an employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP. Recently Assistant Secretary of Labor Phyllis Borzi had some cautionary comments for those who have, and work with, those plans. In a blog post entitled “ESOP 101: 4 Tips for Business Owners”, Borzi noted that...
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Janus Capital Group Inc. has announced that legendary fixed-income manager William H. Gross will be joining Janus Capital Group, where he will manage a recently launched Janus Global Unconstrained Bond Fund and related strategies. According to a news release announcing the move, he will...
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A plan sponsor’s decision to eliminate an option to transfer DC account balances to a DB floor-offset plan didn't violate ERISA’s anti-cutback rules, according to a federal appeals court. In Randal Andersen et al. v. DHL Retirement Pension Plan et al., case number 12-36051, the U.S. Court...
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Adding to an already deep bench, RCAP has hired LPL veteran Bill Dwyer to head up distribution of its non-traded REITs and other products to independent BDs, RIAs, banks and other channels like wire houses. RCAP’s parent’s roots are on the product manufacturing side, which led them to...
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Did you read the August jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics? Me neither. But buried deep in the report, a recent Fiscal Times article noted, was a bad-news milestone that bodes ill for young Boomers and members of “Generation Z” — the next generation following the Millennials....
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Did you read the August jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics? Me neither. But buried deep in the report, a recent Fiscal Times article noted, was a bad-news milestone that bodes ill for young Boomers and members of “Generation Z” — the next generation following the Millennials....
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Politics stinks. Yes, literally, it seems. According to a study published recently in the American Journal of Political Science, it seems that people can literally sniff out ideology. Researchers led by Brown University political scientist Rose McDermott found that, to a small but...
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There is a growing interest among policymakers and regulators about the potential for gamification — the use of game thinking and game mechanics in non-game contexts to engage users in solving problems — to enhance and expand savings in DC plans. If you’ve had experience with this approach,...
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TD Ameritrade has announced a new relationship with one of the largest equity compensation software-as-a-service companies in the world, Equity Administration Solutions, Inc. (EASi). Under the terms of the agreement, TD Ameritrade will handle participant servicing for participating EASi...
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Kris Krikorian has joined Pentegra Retirement Services as a regional director for qualified plan sales. He will be based in Mission Viejo, CA and report to Pete Swisher, Pentegra senior vice president of national sales, and will spearhead the company’s business development efforts in...
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The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating whether bond giant PIMCO artificially boosted the returns of the $3.6 billion PIMCO Total Return exchange-traded fund, according to The Wall Street Journal. Citing people familiar with the matter, the Journal report (subscription...
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Realizing that the opposition has outgunned their lobbying efforts, advocates for an SEC fiduciary rule admit that they are losing the battle “badly” on trying to get the SEC to act on a proposed uniform rule. Similarly, they say they regard the possibility that the SEC will find ways to...
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More than 100 financial advisor attendees of Matrix’s 2014 Get Connected Conference recently attained NAPA’s Qualified Plan Financial Consultant (QPFC) credential. Following the advisors’ completion of a six-month webinar training series was a four-day onsite “boot camp” training led by...
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Right on schedule, last week Oregon State Treasurer Ted Wheeler presented the recommendations of the Retirement Security Task Force to the state legislature — with an eye toward ensuring that the new plans don’t discourage employers from offering ERISA-qualified plans. The recommendations...
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While there are plenty of cautionary tales about the way(s) in which you can unintentionally become a plan fiduciary, a recent court case highlights another potential trap for company officials. In Thomas E. Perez v. Geopharma, Inc., et al., Geopharma’s CEO, Mihir Taneja, brought a motion to...
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The conventional wisdom — as is evident from the mainstream glide paths imbedded in the most popular target date funds (TDFs) — is that DC investors should be invested in portfolios that decrease investor equity exposure over time. On the other hand, a smattering of studies over the last...
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A new survey throws cold water on the notion that a single member of high-net-worth (HNW) couples wears the financial decision-making pants. The survey found that 66% of HNW investors made joint financial decisions with their spouse or partner, and this was particularly true on matters...
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The Urban Institute, a left-leaning think tank, has given “straight A’s” to a conservative U.S. Senator’s retirement savings legislation. The Secure Annuities for Employee (SAFE) Retirement Act (S. 1270), authored by Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), recently...
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One of a series of InvestmentNews articles for plan advisors addresses the issue of managed accounts. Many experts are quick to dismiss managed accounts as a niche that has gathered minimal assets. But those assets have almost doubled over the past two years, to an estimated $163 billion,...
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As expected, FINRA backed off on stringent rules (WSJ subscription required) requiring registered reps to disclose signing bonuses to clients. Instead, FINRA would require reps to send a list of questions to clients that they may want to ask to determine the impact of their broker’s move. ...
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