Pension plans have one less report to file for now. Technical Update 26-1 temporarily waives the year-end “attrition event” report for deadlines on or after September 18. The report normally applies when active participation falls below 80 percent of its start-of-year level, after adding back departures reported separately as single-cause events. PBGC concluded that these reports “rarely identify circumstances warranting additional agency reviews” and often burden frozen plans with few active participants. The waiver lasts until a final rule changing the requirement takes effect. Other event-reporting duties, including single-cause reductions, remain in place.

U.S. retirement assets rose 7.9 percent during the second quarter to $51.2 trillion, according to ICI's quarterly tally. At June 30, IRAs held $19.9 trillion and defined contribution plans held $15 trillion, including $10.8 trillion in 401(k)s. Within 401(k) mutual fund holdings, hybrid funds, which include target-date funds, held $1.7 trillion. Stock funds were the largest category.

A plan administrator crunched 48,944 Form 5500 filings from the 2024 plan year and found the fee story many sponsors suspect. The median reported administrative cost among the plans studied is $162 per participant, but plans with 25 to 99 participants pay a median $364 while plans with 500 or more pay $104. In the author's words, “the dispersion inside a band is wider than the gap between bands,” and nearly a third of plans under 500 participants pay more than twice the study's overall median. The analysis comes from Admin316, a fiduciary-services vendor, so read the benchmarks with that in mind. The figures give sponsors a reason to check their fees against comparable plans, taking account of the services included.

The enforcement pause on parts of the 2024 rule doesn't remove the underlying duties, and Ogletree Deakins notes that violations can expose self-insured employers to an excise tax of $100 per day for each affected person. Eversheds Sutherland turns the bulletin's red flags into questions to ask when selecting a vendor, IFEBP highlights practices such as requiring an employee assistance program referral for mental health treatment when medical care has no comparable requirement, or applying reimbursement discounts only to master's-level mental health providers, and Proskauer cautions that the relief is temporary, conditional on pending litigation, and no shield against complaint-driven review of any category of comparative analysis.

Thursday's Second Circuit ruling limits providers' ability to sue under the No Surprises Act to collect arbitration awards. It doesn't cancel the awards or the obligation to pay them, and regulators can still enforce payment. Thompson Hine's alert says a plan with grounds to challenge an award should review its options with counsel, and counts self-insured plans as the named responding party in roughly 68 percent of last year's disputes. The firm also recommends asking claims administrators for plan-specific arbitration results and using them in cost forecasts. On the administrative side, Segal reports that registration opened September 15 for the new federal dispute-resolution portal, expected to launch late this year, and that required payment-explanation codes apply to services provided on or after January 1, 2027. Plans that outsource this work should confirm their administrator is preparing for both changes. McDermott Will & Schulte's broader survey of NSA litigation and reporting developments is here.

Who will provide continued health coverage after a sale? Lowenstein Sandler's podcast explains why buyers and sellers should settle that question before signing. Generally, a selling-group plan keeps the federal COBRA obligation for the affected beneficiaries while the selling group maintains any group health plan, and those beneficiaries can include people whose qualifying event happened before the sale. If the selling group stops offering all group health coverage in connection with the sale, responsibility can shift to the buyer. Asset sales add a successor-employer test, and hiring the seller's employees alone isn't enough. The parties can assign responsibilities in the purchase agreement, but if that arrangement fails, the party responsible under the regulations still has to provide coverage. A sale doesn't restart an existing COBRA coverage period.

Notice 2026-28 led the Digest when it arrived August 5, and comments on it close October 16. Ogletree Deakins's Friday analysis is a prompt to revisit three details before then. The six-month eligibility period is an election an employer makes in its written policy, not an automatic change. Leave required or paid by a state or local program can help an employer qualify for the credit even though it doesn't increase the amount. And an employer can't claim twice for the same funded benefit, though it may use the premium method for an insured portion and the wage method for a portion paid separately from general assets. Employers can rely on the notice for tax years beginning after 2025 until proposed regulations arrive. It's one of three open comment windows. Comments on the Trump Account and dependent-care assistance proposal we covered August 11 close Friday, September 25, and the Saver's Match questions from Notice 2026-48 close October 5.

In Jane Doe v. The Signature Benefits Plan, No. 8:24-cv-02230 (C.D. Cal. Sept. 17, 2026), Chief Judge Dolly M. Gee ordered the plan, self-funded by The Walt Disney Company, to cover a teenager's five-week residential mental health stay at an out-of-network facility. The plan gave the company “full discretion” to decide claims, but the court found no basis to give the same leeway to Evernorth Behavioral Health, the utilization reviewer that made the denial decisions and is “not mentioned anywhere in the Plan,” so it reviewed the record fresh. The court found that the denials used the wrong standards. The initial letter said the boy was not at “imminent risk” of serious self-harm, a test the applicable guidelines don't contain. They ask instead about persistent thoughts of suicide or self-harm that lower levels of care can't manage, which the court found the record supported. The independent external reviewer applied a definition of medical necessity “found nowhere in the Administrative Record.” The mother won benefits and interest and may seek attorney fees, and the parties must work out the amount owed. For sponsors, the case raises two questions. Has the actual decision maker been given discretion, and do denial letters apply the right criteria?

Gardening and an occasional astrology reading didn't establish that a project manager with young-onset Parkinson's disease could sustain a job. In Zayn v. Unum, No. 3:25-cv-01190-JR (D. Or. Sept. 15, 2026), Magistrate Judge Jolie A. Russo ordered the insurer to restore her long-term disability benefits. Unum relied on surveillance, online activity and doctors who reviewed records without examining her, and two of those reviews used information from another claimant's file. Reviewing the evidence independently rather than deferring to the insurer, the court found that her treating providers' findings supported continuing disability and that her limited activities didn't outweigh evidence of cognitive impairment and fatigue that prevented reliable work. The court reinstated benefits effective November 27, 2024, with back benefits, interest, fees and costs to be worked out. The case illustrates why a claim review needs to connect observed activities to the demands of sustained employment. Roberts Disability Law's summary brought the decision to our attention.

The actuarial-equivalence cases keep converting into pension increases. In Whetstone v. Howard University, No. 1:23-cv-02409 (D.D.C. Sept. 18, 2026), Judge Loren L. AliKhan preliminarily approved a $1.3 million class settlement covering roughly 1,788 retirees and beneficiaries of Howard's frozen pension plan affected by annuity conversions computed with a 1984 unisex mortality table and a 7 percent interest rate. The named plaintiff's numbers show the theory in miniature. His single life annuity was $680.50 a month, the plan's conversion paid $584.73, and he alleged that Treasury-based assumptions would have produced $602.72, a difference of $17.99 every month. If finally approved, the settlement would provide permanent monthly increases and retroactive payments. The settlement reflects uncertainty about how the legal claims would fare. Whether ERISA's actuarial-equivalence requirement imposes a reasonableness test remains unsettled, with the Sixth Circuit's Kellogg decision on one side and a district-court split behind it. The parties must propose dates for a final fairness hearing on or after December 18.