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News Archive
QOTW: SSA Letter
A member recently reached out wondering if any other members receive a lot of inquiries from former employees about a letter from the Social Security Administration stating that they may have a retirement benefit with the company. As these letters tend to cause confusion, the member was wondering if there is a standard template or language... Read More >>
QOTW: Plan Entry Dates
Recently a member asked if we had any information on when plans allow participants to enroll in the plan, separate from service requirements – if participants are allowed to enroll as soon as they are eligible (next pay period) or if (administratively) there are set plan entry dates. We used to include this question in our annual survey of 401(k)... Read More >>
QOTW: Surveying Employees
We have heard lately from some members that they are starting to survey employees about the organization’s offered benefits and we wondered how prevalent it is to ask employees about what benefits they want and/or their satisfaction with current benefits. More than forty percent (42.5 percent) stated they currently survey employees about desired... Read More >>
QOTW: Recordkeeping Fee Allocation to Participants
A member is reevaluating how recordkeeping fees are charged to participants and wanted to know what other members do and why. Thirty percent of respondents stated that they do not pass on the recordkeeping fees to participants. Of those that do pass on recordkeeping fees to participants, nearly half use a pro rata approach, allocating fees based... Read More >>
QOTW: Managed Accounts
More than half (54 percent) of respondents said they offer a managed account solution to participants. That is significantly higher than the 43.6 percent of plans that indicated they provide one in our 64th Annual Survey. It will be interesting to see if that percentage increases when the 65th Annual Survey is published later this year. The most... Read More >>
QOTW: Missing Accounts
A member reached out wanting to see if other companies do anything to help participants track down lost 401(k) accounts. She stated she receives a lot of questions from employees asking about tracking down a 401(k) plan from a former employer that is now out of business, closed, moved, or it is simply hard to find information. Eighty percent of... Read More >>
QOTW: EARN Provision
One of the revenue-raising provisions currently in the EARN (Enhancing American Retirement Now) Act that was passed out of committee in the Senate last month, is a provision that would permit an employee to elect to treat employer matching and other employer contributions as after-tax Roth contributions. This week we asked members if their company... Read More >>
QOTW: Small Distributions
A PSCA member reached out wondering what other plan sponsors do about paying out very small plan balances. They have a significant number of terminated employees with a plan balance less than $10, which is more than it costs to process and distribute the balances, and very often participants don’t cash very small checks which creates an additional... Read More >>
QOTW: Retirement Tier
We’ve been hearing talk in the industry about the benefits of companies trying to keep assets in the plan, especially with the significant increase in assets expected to flow out of plans as the baby boomers retire. This might look like adding a “retirement tier” to encourage retirees to leave assets in the plan and draw them down over time. This... Read More >>
QOTW: LTPT Hour Tracking
A provision in the SECURE Act passed in 2019 provided for retirement plan eligibility for long-term part-time employees – those that earn at least 500 hours of service in each of three consecutive 12-month periods beginning with the 2021 plan year. This means that at the end of the 2023 plan year, any employees that worked 500 hours in each of... Read More >>