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Portal Conductor, Columnist: Nevin E. Adams, JD
Nevin is the former Chief Content Officer and Head of Retirement Research for the American Retirement Association. One of the retirement industry’s most prolific writers, these days he’s “retired,” which means he writes less, but continues to keep his eye on developments in, and threats to, the nation’s private retirement system.
In addition to helping guide the agenda development for the NAPA 401(k) Summit, he’s also the “Nevin” in the Nevin & Fred podcast (along with renowned ERISA attorney Fred Reish), offering irreverent, but relevant perspectives on the critical issues confronting plan sponsors, advisors, and retirement industry professionals.
Article Index
By Nevin E. Adams, JD 4/7/2023
Those of you who hung around for the last session at the 2023 NAPA 401(k) Summit got a special treat — our own advisor version of Family Feud…
Our version includes Team Wirehouse/Independents in a rematch against Team Aggregators to see who could best match the responses provided by plan sponsor...
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By Nevin E. Adams, JD 4/6/2023
An excessive fee suit with a “complicated procedural history” and one that a federal judge says “appears to be a lawsuit in search of a theory” has, once again, culminated in a win for the plan fiduciaries.
This time we’re talking about the suit alleging that the Georgetown University 403(b) plan...
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By Nevin E. Adams, JD 4/5/2023
The man who was instrumental in encouraging behavioral finance-focused default structures in 401(k)s now cautions that those defaults need to be “smart.”
Speaking at the NAPA 401(k) Summit, professor Shlomo Benartzi — who, along with Richard Thaler authored and advocated the Save More Tomorrow...
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By Nevin E. Adams, JD 4/4/2023
As we headed to San Diego last week, two things were uppermost in my mind.
The Summit, of course — you don’t spend 10 months of your life focused on pulling together (and executing) the nation’s largest (and for my money, best) retirement plan advisor conference without running through your mind a...
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By Nevin E. Adams, JD 3/31/2023
Well, here we are again at the end of yet another workweek — and just a couple of days away from the NAPA 401(k) Summit — but just look at what (still) happened to these guys and gals…
First, some odds and ends…
Is peanut butter a liquid? A ruling from the TSA: https://www.foxbusiness.com/...
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By Nevin E. Adams, JD 3/31/2023
Claiming that the suit by 25 state attorneys general “rests on a false premise,” the Labor Department is pushing back on a motion to forestall implementation of the so-called ESG regulation.
More specifically, the “Defendants’ Opposition to Plaintiff’s Motion for Preliminary Injunction” says that...
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By Nevin E. Adams, JD 3/31/2023
Seems that every excessive fee litigation has at its core the assumption that all recordkeeping services are interchangeable — a “commodity,” if you will. This week we asked readers what they thought.
The question — a simple enough one, of course. But we should perhaps start with a simple...
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By Nevin E. Adams, JD 3/30/2023
A federal judge has denied the Labor Department’s motion to move a suit involving the so-called ESG regulation from a federal court in Texas to Washington, DC.
U.S. District Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk denied the Labor Department’s motion (State of Utah et al. v. Walsh et al., case number 2:23-cv-...
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By Nevin E. Adams, JD 3/29/2023
Another excessive fee suit with participant-plaintiffs represented by two active ERISA litigants — has been dismissed on a number of grounds.
The defendants in this case — DISH Network Corporation, the board of directors of that firm, and the retirement plan fiduciaries of the $841 million DISH ...
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By Nevin E. Adams, JD 3/28/2023
A few weeks back, an industry friend commented that, while we had certainly done a great job promoting the NAPA 401(k) Summit, that campaign hadn’t fully captured the essence of what makes “the Summit” different. Let me try here.
There are, admittedly, a lot of conferences out there — and most...
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By Nevin E. Adams, JD 3/27/2023
Seems that every excessive fee litigation has at its core the assumption that all recordkeeping services are interchangeable — a “commodity,” if you will. This week, we’re asking you — is recordkeeping a commodity?
The question — a simple enough one, of course. But we should perhaps start with a...
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By Nevin E. Adams, JD 3/27/2023
Following a United States Supreme Court directive, a federal court has reconsidered its earlier conclusions in an excessive fee case.
Now, it’s been awhile, but you may recall that the case[i] (April Hughes et al. v. Northwestern University) had been dismissed by this same Seventh Circuit back in...
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By Nevin E. Adams, JD 3/24/2023
Well, here we are again at the end of yet another workweek—and just a week away from the NAPA 401(k) Summit—but just look at what (still) happened to these guys and gals…
First, some odds and ends…
Ever gone bungee jumping, and found yourself wondering what would happen if… well, in Pattaya,...
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By Nevin E. Adams, JD 3/24/2023
Commenting that “the Florida court’s analysis is rooted in a fundamental legal error,” the Department of Labor says it may appeal a ruling that upended its guidance pertaining to fiduciary duty regarding rollovers.
Last month, the United States District Court’s Middle District of Florida sided...
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By Nevin E. Adams, JD 3/24/2023
Ours is a business guided by black and white laws, but with lots of gray nuance and interpretation applied to individual situations. This week, we asked readers to weigh in on some questions that normally get answered with nuance — and, shed of (most of that), got some “clarity.”
QDIA/Default...
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By Nevin E. Adams, JD 3/22/2023
Eli Lilly has withdrawn its motion for attorney fees and costs—a move that says a lot about the cost of litigation in both time and money.
You may recall that the defendants in this case are the fiduciaries of the $8.2 billion Eli Lilly plan (as well as the company itself, and the employee benefit...
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By Nevin E. Adams, JD 3/21/2023
Fans of Virginia, Arizona and Purdue, take heart (not to mention Stanford and Indiana in the women’s NCAA).
My college team didn’t make the NCAA tournament this year.
Not that that’s unusual. They (DePaul University) haven’t been “there” since 2004. And in all honestly, it’s been a long time...
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By Nevin E. Adams, JD 3/20/2023
Apparently it’s never too early to start thinking about the cost-of-living adjustments for Social Security.
While at this point such things seem to be highly speculative (to say the least), February inflation — as measured by the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (...
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By Nevin E. Adams, JD 3/20/2023
Ours is a business guided by black and white laws, but with lots of gray nuance and interpretation applied to individual situations. This week, we’ve got some questions that normally get answered with nuance — but we’d like you to just pick one…
One answer per question, that is. We’ve got just a...
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By Nevin E. Adams, JD 3/20/2023
Live Nation finds itself in the crosshairs of litigation — and it has nothing to do with Taylor Swift tickets.
As it turns out, Live Nation Entertainment Inc. (which merged with TicketMaster in 2010), currently embroiled in controversy about access to tickets for mega star Taylor Swift, now also...
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