Retirement Regulation

The fee cuts are the largest annual expense ratio reduction in the firm’s 50-year history – and the first major announcement from newly appointed CEO Salim Ramji.

The new offering is designed to expand access to workplace retirement plans for small and medium-sized businesses to "pool" their assets into a single plan, while alleviating the administrative burdens of running a retirement plan.

About 70% of the 401(k) plan—nearly $2 billion—was invested in one fund, when "much cheaper" versions of this investment were available, allege employees in the class action lawsuit, on behalf of 38,000 participants.

In early January, President Biden signed the new law, which will boost Social Security retirement payments to police and firefighters, but now payments (though retroactive) will be delayed.

Here are six of the big retirement stories that employers, advisors and plan sponsors (and retirement editors, like myself) need to keep on top of in the coming year.

The class action lawsuit, filed on behalf of 60,000 plan participants, alleges the airline failed to replace a “chronically underperforming” large-cap fund holding over $2 billion in retirement plan assets for 15 years – and “still continues to this day.”

Demand for in-plan retirement income is strong as defined benefit plans continue to be phased out, according to Michael Dullaghan of Franklin Templeton.

There are currently over 600,000 micro 401(k) plans in the U.S., with less than $5 million in assets, and that number will increase to more than 1 million, driven in part by state mandates and federal tax incentives, according to a new Cerulli report.