Betterment at Work released a new survey on the state of retirement readiness across the U.S. workforce. The report, which tracks year-over-year trends from 2022, polled 1,000 full-time U.S. employees to examine how retirement readiness and financial wellness have evolved in the past 12 months, shifts in employee benefit preferences, and how these trends have changed within a shifting economic environment.
As a result of lawmakers in Colorado and Oregon passing state auto-IRA mandates this past year, more small businesses in those states are offering 401k plans, according to new research published by payroll company Gusto Inc. Compared to neighboring states that did not have automatic individual retirement account mandates this year, the adoption of 401k plans and plan participation both increased significantly more in states with mandates, Gusto found.
Loan and hardship withdrawals taken from workplace retirement plans in the third quarter of 2023 hit their highest levels in more than two years, according to a report from Empower. Among a study of 5.3 million defined contribution workplace savers in Empower accounts, 0.8% took hardship withdrawals in Q3, and 2.6% took out loans from their savings. Those were the highest rates in the past eight quarters.
Unchecked hidden fees in small business 401k plans continue to be an issue despite regulation, litigation, and advancements in plan design leading to years of fee compression, according to a recent white paper by the advisory Beacon Financial Services.
The Internal Revenue Service and Department of Labor published their regulatory agendas for spring 2024. The agendas describe the short-term objectives of the regulators and contain items related to the fiduciary adviser definition proposal, SECURE 2.0, health plans, fiduciary corrections, and employee ownership.
A Massachusetts federal court has given preliminary approval to a $61 million settlement in a pending lawsuit concerning General Electric's alleged mismanagement of retirement savings invested in a proprietary fund. The settlement would partially reimburse about 200,000 current and former participants in GE's 401k plan for losses incurred since September 2011 because of GE Asset Management's comparatively poor performance.
A practical aspect that is sometimes overlooked or unconsidered to a meaningful degree is the committee structure; more specifically, whether the committee size is positioned for successful decision-making. That is the focus of this article.
An identical discussion draft containing several technical corrections and other SECURE 2.0 clarifications was released late Wednesday by both the House and Senate. The bill would correct errors relating to the inadvertent annulment of pre-tax catch-up contributions in 2024, make the contribution limit for new Starter-K plans equal to the IRA contribution limit as lawmakers intended, and fix a drafting error regarding RMDs, among several others.
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Collected Wisdom™
Our researchers look for what they think are some of the better resources available to assist you in administering your plan or helping your clients. We group these resources in our COLLECTED WISDOM™ topics to make it easy for you to locate the information you need. Each item in a category contains a summary and date of when it was placed in the group.
We also maintain some older material in these collections for perspective and context.
