One of the many elements of business ownership and management is attracting and retaining productive employees. Offering the right mix of employee benefits tailored to your employee population can play an important role in that process. One area of employee benefits to consider offering depending on employee demographics is educational ...
Earlier this month, a Mayo Clinic employee filed a proposed class action against the clinic, arguing that the clinic’s employee health plan and its third-party administrator (TPA) Medica, underpaid for services performed by out-of-network doctors, thus passing on the costs to participants.
The lawsuit alleges that the health system and ...
One of the most basic duties of a defined contribution plan sponsor is to ensure that that there is no delay and participants’ salary deferral elections are correctly and timely deposited into the retirement plan. Not only is this duty necessary for proper administration of the plan, it is also part of a plan sponsor’s fiduciary duties under ...
If you administer a 403(b) plan you should be familiar with the term “universal availability”. This concept means that, as a general rule, all employees must be allowed to make elective deferrals into the plan immediately upon hire. Thus, 403(b) plans generally cannot have eligibility requirements for elective salary deferrals into the ...
For the vast majority of records maintained by public schools, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is not applicable. This is because most records that contain medical information related to a student and shared with the school will be considered an “education record” under the Family Educational Rights and ...
Over the last several years, numerous large pension plan sponsors have transferred billions of dollars in financial risk related to their pension plan benefit obligations to insurance companies through the purchase of group annuities. Known as pension risk transfer (PRT), these actions have now led to two recent proposed class action ...
In the laundry list of retirement plan administrative and operational requirements, plan sponsors may sometimes overlook their obligations with respect to terminated vested employees. Even though these individuals have left the company, the plan sponsor still retains fiduciary obligations to them. In order to provide them their benefits ...
A question that almost always arises when we consult on correcting retirement plan errors is, “Can we use the DOL (Department of Labor) calculator to determine earnings?” Compared to the alternatives, the DOL calculator provides a definite, quick solution that is not administratively onerous. I wish my answer to the question could always be ...
The Department of Labor recently announced the 2024 inflation adjustments for ERISA-related penalties applicable to health and welfare and retirement plans. Applicable penalties increased for 2024 as follows:
- Failure to furnish or maintain records - $37 per participant
- Failure to file Form 5500 - $2670
- Failure to notify participants of ...
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) gave plan sponsors an early Christmas gift with the release of new guidance late last year addressing several key provisions contained in SECURE 2.0. A welcome portion of the notice was further guidance on the new option allowing for participants in 401(k) and 403(b) plans to elect to receive employer matching ...