Today, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) issued much anticipated cybersecurity guidance for employee retirement plans. This comes more than four and a half years after the ERISA Advisory Council, a 15-member body appointed by the Secretary of Labor to provide guidance on employee benefit plans, shared with the federal
Plan Risk Management
Personal Data from Thousands of Pension Plan Accounts Breached…Third-Party Service Provider Blamed
One of the last things pension plan participants would want to learn as they get ready to celebrate the Christmas holiday is that personal data from their pension accounts may have been compromised. This is the case, unfortunately, for approximately 30,000 Now:Pensions customers whose names, postal and email addresses, birth dates and the equivalent of…
Pension Plan Suffers Cybersecurity Attack, ERISA Advisory Council Offers Cybersecurity Recommendations to DOL
It has been reported that infamous bank robber, Slick Willie Sutton, once said, “I rob banks because that’s where the money is.” Data thieves, understandably, have a similar strategy – go where the data is. The retail industry knows this as it has been a popular target for payment card data. The healthcare and certain…
Will Your Forfeiture Account Disqualify Your 401(k) Plan?
In the last six months, several clients called me regarding substantial balances in a so-called “forfeiture account” in their 401(k) plans. A few of these clients have forfeiture accounts that violate the ERISA requirements. It is imperative that forfeitures be handled properly since both the IRS and the Department of Labor (DOL) on audit generally…
Asset Purchasers Face Increased Exposure for the Multiemployer Pension Debts of Sellers
Both buyers and sellers in asset sale transactions should be cognizant of the ongoing erosion of the common law rule that the purchaser is not responsible for the seller’s liabilities absent a contractual assumption of such liabilities, as evidenced by a recent Ninth Circuit case finding that the theory of successor liability may be used…
IRS Prohibits Future Annuity-to-Lump Sum Conversions for Defined Benefit Plan Retirees Currently Receiving Benefits
On July 9, 2015, the IRS released Notice 2015-49 (the “Notice”) informing taxpayers that the Service and the Treasury intend to amend the required minimum distribution regulations to eliminate the recent defined benefit (“DB”) plan risk management strategy of offering lump sum payments to replace annuity payments to retirees currently receiving joint and survivor, single…