Retirement Trends

When the company made the announcement last week, many people in the industry said they would believe it when they see it. Schwab announced more than two years ago that it would develop an ETF-based 401(k) platform but never rolled one out.

Participants in a study who were given the chance to consider several policy changes to shore up the Social Security system favored reducing payments to high wage earners, raising the retirement age and other remedies that would eliminate most of the systems debt.

The Milliman 100 Pension Funding Index found that the funding ratio of the plans fell from 95.2 percent to 91.2 percent, which translated to a $67 billion rise in unfunded liabilities to a total of $140 billion.

At issue in Fifth Third Bancorp v. Dudenhoeffer is whether the presumption that employers act prudently when offering their own stock will remain a guiding principle.

After saying last week that AOL would pay matching retirement contributions a lump sum once a year -- the CEO blamed Obamacare and the medical expenses of two employees pregnancies for forcing the change.

The share of Americans in the labor force, known as the participation rate, is hovering around an almost four-decade low as the population ages and discouraged job seekers give up looking for work.