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As a growing number of large U.S. companies announce plans to “de-risk” their traditional defined benefit plans to lower their pension obligation and retiree distribution costs, the Pension Rights Center called for a moratorium on such actions until Congress can look into the risks these strategies pose to workers and retirees. On Oct. 17, Verizon […]
When given a chance each year to change their employee benefits, including retirement savings options, most American workers don’t, a recent poll by insurance and benefits provider MetLife found. And just over half of those surveyed feel very confident that they will make the right choices for themselves and their families during this “open enrollment” […]
by Tammy Binford Work-life balance gets a lot of buzz in the workplace. Everyone is concerned about being productive at work while saving time for other important parts of life. Just the term work-life balance can invoke an image of employees teetering on a tightrope, with career, family, friends, hobbies, and other interests pulling from […]
Corporate retirement plans in the United States are much less likely to employ socially responsible investing strategies in their portfolio investments than are public pension plans, according to a new report by global financial services company BNY Mellon. Concerns about ERISA and fiduciary roles, along with “lack of interest” and “performance tradeoff,” were most often […]
The latest annual survey of Fortune 100 companies’ retirement plan types confirms the familiar shift to defined contribution plans by most of the largest U.S. firms. As of 2012, 70 of the Fortune 100 companies offered only DC plans to new, salaried employees. Just 11 still offer a traditional defined benefit pension plan to new […]
When it comes to health reform’s new Summary of Benefits and Coverage, the feds will give some compliance leeway in cases where plan sponsors cannot fit data into the narrow spaces prescribed in the law, a prominent federal official told benefits attorneys in Washington, D.C. Many in the industry say the health reform law was […]
Corporate pensions’ September funding levels continued to recover, gaining ground on rising interest rates that reduced the funds’ liabilities. Three benchmark measures of the funded status of typical corporate retirement plans all showed improvement from August and record-low levels recorded earlier this year. Pension liabilities, or benefit obligations, of the 100 largest corporate defined benefit […]
Retirement plans’ fortunes are tied to the financial markets — and how the federal government regulates them — and there has been no bigger development in that arena than the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act of 2010. The law made news Oct. 3, when presidential candidate Mitt Romney criticized Dodd-Frank’s “too big to fail” provision, […]
Concerns about whether enough Americans have access to retirement savings plans regularly drive alarmist headlines and heated Capitol Hill hearings, but two recent studies indicate that workers’ access to such plans is, in fact, widespread. For U.S. workers most likely to be able to save and to be focused on preparing financially for retirement, coverage […]
GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney recently provided more details on his own health reform plan, stating that if elected, on his first day in office, says he will issue an executive order for the federal government to issue health reform waivers to all 50 states, and immediately work on repealing the health reform law passed […]