Posts Tagged: Retirement Plans

benchmark (noun) \bench-märk\ Something that serves as a standard by which others may be measured or judged. Benchmarking is common in the financial industry as a means of gauging progress or measuring success. Investment performance is often benchmarked against a financial market index, such as the S&P 500. The skill…

Retirement plan rule changes often don’t make waves beyond our corner of the business world, but in 2015 they made national headlines. The problem of excessive fees for retirement plan investments and advice garnered more attention last year, not only with the pending rule changes around fiduciary responsibilities but also…

It’s become a familiar story in the retirement benefits industry—a company comes under fire for excessive fees charged to its retirement plan, and plan sponsors face class action lawsuits for failing to act in the interests of the plan’s participants. More often than not, these stories don’t end well for…

In prior generations, employees tended to stay at a single company for much of their working lifetimes. Upon retirement, employees would receive periodic payments from the company’s pension plan, sometimes referred to as a defined-benefit plan. The actual management of pension plan assets, including all trading research, projections and operational functions was left to investment professionals. Employees did not have to assume responsibility for making any investment decisions themselves.