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401(k) Plans
Documenting the Death of Pensions
By Stephen Rosenberg on
I have written before about the question of whether we are creating a more litigious environment by switching employees from defined benefit plans to defined contribution plans, and we all generally know that companies are overwhelmingly shifting employees from the former to the latter. Those of you in the retirement industry certainly already are aware…
Pension Performance, 401(k) Plans and Breach of Fiduciary Duty Litigation
By Stephen Rosenberg on
This is an interesting paper, that comes to us via Workplace Prof, and which provokes further thought on the issue of the litigation boom involving 401(k) plans. The paper finds that pension plans outperform mutual funds, and attributes that differential to costs buried within mutual funds, as well as to the size of…
Behavioral Economics and a Disincentive to Retire
By Stephen Rosenberg on
We have talked a fair amount on this blog about “choice architecture” and how the new structure of the retirement system, with its move from pensions to 401(k) plans, may be affecting behavior in unintended ways, such as by encouraging litigation. At his blog, the RiskProf has an excellent post on another negative…
401(k) Plans and Breach of Fiduciary Duty Lawsuits
By Stephen Rosenberg on
I have written before, and frequently (such as here and here), about the coming boom in litigation against plan sponsors and fiduciaries over alleged excessive fees and other alleged malfeasance in the administration of 401(k) plans. One point I have tried to drive home in my posts, including here and here, is that…
Behavioral Economics, the Pension Protection Act and 401(k) Litigation
By Stephen Rosenberg on
I have written before about my thesis that 401(k) litigation, and the tendency of individuals to pursue such suits, may be driven in part by the psychology of retirement benefits and the uncertainty for employees as to whether they will be able to fund their retirement that these types of retirement savings vehicles create, particularly…
Defined Benefit, Defined Contribution, and The Psychological Effect on Litigants
By Stephen Rosenberg on
Here is a very neat and interesting paper contrasting defined benefit plans – i.e. pensions – with defined contribution plans – i.e. 401(k) plans – and addressing, in particular: (1) the decline in the former in the workplace and replacement by the latter; and (2) the problems engendered by that change. In essence, the authors…
Introducing Pension Governance LLC
By Stephen Rosenberg on
I have talked before about my tendency to veer from my appointed rounds when something more interesting appears on the horizon than that which I had planned to work or post on, and today is another one of those days. I came in full of grand hopes to discuss insurance coverage for intellectual property risks…
Novak and the National Law Journal
By Stephen Rosenberg on
I guess this is me and the media week here at the blog. There is an excellent story in the National Law Journal this week on the Novak decision out of the Ninth Circuit, which I talked about here, in which the court allowed attachment of ERISA governed retirement benefits as part of criminal…
Insurance Coverage for Pension Plan Fiduciaries
There is an interesting interrelationship between the two primary subjects of this blog, ERISA litigation and insurance coverage, and one that I had not really thought much about until Rick Shoff, who works with Mike Pratico over at CapTrust Financial Advisors, raised it in a conversation recently. As I have mentioned in the past,…