Proposed regulations issued in August spell out how employers can make tax-free contributions to employees' Trump Accounts, beginning with a separate written plan document. Warner Norcross walks through the ground rules. Contributions are capped at $2,500 per employee per year no matter how many children an employee has, the cap counts both direct employer dollars and cafeteria-plan elections, and amounts get reported on the W-2. Employers cannot steer workers to a preferred custodian, so contributions may flow to many institutions, and the Labor Department has said these plans generally sit outside ERISA because the benefits belong to the children rather than the employees. A public hearing is set for October 15, and employers may rely on the proposal immediately.

DCIIA's 2026 Data Dashboard counts nearly 1.1 million defined contribution plans holding $14.5 trillion for 148 million participants, and projects almost 1.3 million plans by 2031. The sobering number inside the growth story is leakage. For every dollar entering the DC system this year, more than seven dollars will roll out to IRAs.

Average self-directed brokerage account balances climbed 8.7% to nearly $397,000 in the second quarter as trading activity picked up. Millennials posted the strongest year-over-year growth at 19.5%, and NVIDIA held the top stock position for a fifth consecutive quarter.

The Plan Sponsor Council of America asked sponsors whether they will amend their plans to accept Saver's Match contributions when the federal match arrives for tax year 2027. About 36% are considering it, 47% say no, mostly because their workforces out-earn the income caps, and 16% had never heard of it.

Forty-five years after Section 129 joined the Code, the IRS has proposed the first regulations on dependent care assistance program nondiscrimination testing. Seyfarth walks through all four statutory tests, each receiving detailed guidance for the first time, including a ratio-percentage safe harbor for the eligibility test and an average benefits calculation that counts only employees who actually receive benefits, a change that may make the test easier to pass for employers who have struggled with it. A new correction mechanism lets a failing plan preserve tax-favored treatment by moving excess benefits into affected individuals' taxable income by the W-2 deadline. Comments are due September 25, a public hearing is set for October 15, and employers may rely on the proposal now.

Marsh's national survey of more than 1,800 employers projects health benefit costs rising 8.2% in 2027, the sharpest annual jump since 2003, and 11% for employers who take no action. Some 59% plan cost-reduction moves such as raising deductibles, and GLP-1 coverage alone accounts for about a percentage point of the increase.

An opinion piece from the founder of Empower Healthcare Insights argues that moving beyond traditional healthcare options opens the door to a better experience for employers and employees alike.

The boards of 22 multiemployer plans, from foundry workers to food terminal employees, say the PBGC has kept them from applying for the special financial assistance Congress funded in the American Rescue Plan. Congress told the agency to process every application within 120 days; the funds say they have sat on a waitlist for more than a year without being allowed to file at all. The complaint also attacks the PBGC's position that terminated plans are ineligible, which the Second Circuit struck down in the Bakery Drivers case, now the subject of the agency's pending Supreme Court petition. The plans asked for a preliminary injunction and an expedited hearing the day they filed, and the docket has not slowed for the calendar. The court entered a scheduling order on Labor Day.

The Federal Reserve's disability plan falls outside ERISA, but that did not save the claim administrator from an ERISA-style loss last Thursday. Borrowing the deferential arbitrary-and-capricious standard from ERISA case law, the court still found the benefit termination could not stand. The administrator never obtained records from the spine specialist treating what it acknowledged was the primary disabling condition, quoted favorable excerpts while omitting the same providers' conclusions that the claimant was totally disabled, described as unremarkable the MRI films that reviewing physicians read to show herniations needing surgery, and disposed of the entire appeal in one conclusory paragraph. The claim goes back for reconsideration rather than an award, and the lesson travels beyond the Fed, since courts reach for ERISA's playbook even where ERISA does not apply.

A former employee's class action against Lithia Motors over its $1 billion 401(k) plan produced a split ruling last Wednesday. The claims that the plan paid Merrill Lynch excessive recordkeeping fees survive, both as fiduciary breaches and as prohibited transactions with a party in interest, along with a claim that Lithia failed to monitor those fees. The theory that using forfeited employer contributions to reduce future company contributions violates ERISA is gone for good. The court called it novel and unsupported by present law, refused any amendment, and dropped a footnote cataloging the near-identical complaints the same plaintiffs' firm has filed elsewhere. A challenge to the plan's switch from mutual funds to collective investment trusts also failed, for lack of any concrete injury.

Equitable cut off long-term disability benefits when the policy shifted from own-occupation to any-occupation coverage, relying on a report listing jobs the claimant could supposedly perform. Reviewing the record fresh, the court found a gap it could not overlook. The insurer's medical review said no cognitive testing had been done and never mentioned mental health treatment, even though the file documented an anxiety disorder, its treatment, and the medications. Ignoring treating-provider evidence that way denied the claimant a full and fair review, so the claim goes back to the insurer. The win was not total, though. The court read the policy's education, training or experience language to mean that any one of the three can qualify a person for a job.

A former Husch Blackwell partner claimed the firm violated ERISA by holding back money from his pay all year for the plan's year-end profit-sharing contribution and depositing it months later, past the deadline that applies to employee deferrals. Last Wednesday the court granted summary judgment for the firm and dismissed the case, with reasoning that matters to any partnership. The holdbacks fund an employer contribution, and employer contributions become plan assets only when they are deposited, so the strict deposit-timing rules for participant contributions never applied. What a pay stub calls the money does not change what the plan documents say it is, and partners drawing firm income are not employees earning wages.

Not every disability ruling last week went the claimant's way. Reviewing the record fresh, with the burden on the claimant, a California federal court granted judgment for Lincoln National even though the tinnitus, hearing loss, and depression diagnoses were undisputed. A diagnosis is not the same as functional impairment, the court reasoned, and the claimant's own treating physician agreed he could perform his sedentary job with restrictions that did not touch its duties. An earlier short-term disability approval under a separate contract did not carry over.

The stable value litigation wave picked up another survivor last Wednesday, in a ruling that teaches two lessons at once. A former Penn State Health employee had signed a severance release, and the court enforced it, dismissing his individual and class claims. But a release cannot waive claims brought on a plan's own behalf, so his derivative claims proceed. Those claims allege the fiduciaries kept an underperforming Great-West guaranteed investment contract while paying the same insurer recordkeeping fees 224% higher than average, and let forfeitures offset nearly twelve million dollars of the employer's own contributions without accounting for the conflict of interest. That loyalty theory survived where other forfeiture suits keep failing because it attacks the self-interested exercise of discretion, not the practice itself. The court also rejected an industry amicus attack on the complaint's comparator funds, holding that perfect comparators are not required at the pleading stage.

The Eleventh Circuit affirmed summary judgment for Aetna, holding the insurer did not act arbitrarily in terminating long-term disability benefits after the claimant ignored seven requests for updated tax returns and income documentation, including two more chances during the administrative appeal. The plan conditioned benefits on proof of continued loss, and a circuit-level reminder emerges that the duty to cooperate with reasonable information requests runs both ways.

Eighty percent of Americans now say the country faces a retirement crisis, per National Institute on Retirement Security research, as inflation and healthcare costs squeeze what households can put away.

Public-sector workers who cut back hours for caregiving likely do not know what it costs them at retirement, a new Pew study finds. A career worked at 20 hours a week produces roughly half the annual retirement income of a full-time career in a defined contribution plan, and the reductions run steeper still in defined benefit plans.

With 59% of Americans lacking the savings to cover an emergency expense, employers are rethinking financial wellness benefits, from emergency savings programs to retirement plans to AI-powered financial advice.