The IRS is telling workers the federal government will match their retirement savings. Notice CP321J goes to filers who claimed the saver's credit on 2025 returns or whose income was in the eligible range. The match takes effect in 2027. Eligible workers will receive a federal contribution of up to 50 percent of the first $2,000 they save, a maximum of $1,000. The money goes directly into the worker's retirement account, with the first deposits arriving in 2028. Plans can choose whether to accept the federal matching deposits. In PSCA's survey, 45.6 percent of plan sponsors say they will not, 16 percent had not heard of the program, and 2.4 percent plan to accept. Eligible workers whose plans do not accept the deposits may be able to direct the match to a traditional IRA that does, per Notice 2026-48, and amounts under $100 can be taken as a refundable credit instead. Since about half of Americans do not know what the saver's credit is even as it phases out, employers should be ready for participant questions when the notices land.

Milliman turns this month's IRS clarification into a plan-by-plan checklist. The dividing line is whether an amendment is required or discretionary. Optional SECURE and SECURE 2.0 features a plan has already put into operation, such as letting participants take employer contributions as Roth, generally must be reflected in a plan amendment by December 31, 2026, under Notice 2024-2's extension, with more time for collectively bargained, governmental, and public school 403(b) plans. Required amendments follow the annual Required Amendments List and often land later: the Roth catch-up requirement is expected on the 2027 list, making its deadline generally December 31, 2029. The forward calendar matters too. Automatic enrollment, long-term part-time, and remaining minimum-distribution requirements will each be listed only after final regulations, which are not expected to apply earlier than the plan year starting six months after they are issued. The near-term task for calendar-year plans is an inventory of optional features already in operation, because those carry the year-end 2026 date.

The federal agency that insures private-sector pensions has temporarily waived one report triggered by a decline in active plan participants. Technical Update 26-1 suspends the attrition-event report, a year-end filing due when a plan's active participation falls sharply, after the PBGC concluded the reports seldom uncover anything needing scrutiny and mostly burden frozen plans with few active workers. Milliman's alert fills in the context: reportable events generally go to the agency on Form 10 within 30 days, small and well-funded plans were often exempt from this report already, and the waiver covers deadlines on or after September 18, lasting until a final rule takes effect. What does not change matters as much. Reports for single-cause reductions, a layoff, shutdown, or restructuring that cuts more than 20 percent of active participants at once, are still required, along with every other reportable event.

More than three-quarters of calendar-year multiemployer pension plans surveyed by Segal are in the green zone for 2026, meaning they are not classified as endangered or critical, and counting plans receiving special financial assistance there are more well-funded plans now than in 2008, when zone certifications began. Two federal appeals courts also held this year, in Reichert v. Kellogg and Drummond v. Southern Company Services, that the assumptions used to calculate different pension payment options must be reasonable. Those assumptions can affect how much a retiree receives when choosing, for example, a pension that continues paying a surviving spouse. The courts did not prescribe a single acceptable method. The recap also carries quarter-in-review notes on the Federal Reserve and a short framework for using AI on plan documents and participant communications, with human review of everything AI produces.

An employee eligible for a distribution from a former employer's employee stock ownership plan can generally roll it into a 403(b) plan, the experts from Groom Law Group and CAPTRUST write, because an ESOP is a qualified plan and its eligible rollover distributions can move into a 403(b) that accepts rollovers under its terms. They add one caution. A distribution that includes employer securities can carry different tax consequences than a cash rollover, so the employee may want tax advice before moving the money. Administrators should check what the plan document actually says about which rollovers it accepts.

A fight over who is inflating hospital bills, with plan dollars in the middle. The Blue Cross Blue Shield Association says AI-assisted coding tools added about $942 million to its costs over two years without a matching rise in treatment. It points to more anemia diagnoses without more transfusions. PwC analysts separately attribute 9 percent of next year's increase in insurer medical costs to AI billing tools. Billing companies, whose coding platforms reach most U.S. hospitals, say the tools identify patient conditions and treatment complexity that hospitals previously failed to document fully. Employers that pay their own health claims should ask their claims administrator how it checks higher charges generated by AI-assisted billing.

The Board of Health of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, which includes Pittsburgh, voted unanimously Monday to approve a proposed ordinance requiring employer-paid parental leave. The measure now goes to the County Council, and County Executive Sara Innamorato supports it, but it is not law yet. As approved, it would cover employers with at least 15 full- or part-time employees and provide up to 12 weeks of leave at full wages, capped at $4,200 a week, within the first year after a birth or adoption. PublicSource reports the measure would be the first county-level paid parental leave requirement in the nation.

California employees will be able to take bereavement leave for the death of a "designated person." Governor Newsom signed SB 1149, which extends the California Family Rights Act's five days of bereavement leave, unpaid unless an employer policy or accrued paid leave applies, beyond the statutory family list to any individual related by blood or whose association with the employee is the equivalent of a family relationship. The employee may identify the person at the time of the request, and employers may limit the designation to one person per 12-month period. The change takes effect January 1, 2027, which puts it on the fall handbook-update list for any employer with California workers, alongside training for the managers who receive these requests first.

Very few 401(k) fee cases reach trial. After a six-day bench trial, Judge William Young found breaches of the duties of prudence and loyalty in how the plan's recordkeeping fees were managed, found the company and its board failed to monitor the investment committee, and ordered the company to restore $715,264 to the plan, plus $471,957 in prejudgment interest, just under $1.2 million in all. The committee never sought competing bids through a request for proposals or information and never negotiated with Capital Group, the plan's recordkeeper and a trustee since at least 2009. The plaintiffs sought about $9.25 million, but the judge was not persuaded that the plan could have obtained their expert's proposed $21-per-person fee. He instead used Capital Group's unsolicited reduction from $48 to $40 per participant as evidence of what the committee could have negotiated earlier. Trader Joe's won everything else. The forfeiture claim failed mid-trial because the plan document assigns forfeiture allocation to the company, and the amounts used to offset contributions went straight into participant accounts. The claims over the plan's only actively managed large-growth fund failed because the watch-list process, quarterly reviews, and the addition of an index-fund alternative added up to a sufficiently robust process.

A pension risk transfer lawsuit will move forward, but not against the employer. In a pension risk transfer, a company hands its pension obligations to an insurer by buying a group annuity, and retired AT&T workers allege the independent fiduciary that ran AT&T's transaction, State Street Global Advisors, imprudently chose Athene, an insurer they say leans heavily on affiliated reinsurance. Monday's order adopts the magistrate judge's recommendation: the prudence claim against SSGA survives dismissal, while every claim against AT&T itself stays dismissed. On standing, the court held the alleged loss of value is injury enough. Taking the complaint as true at this stage, the retirees were "directly harmed by receiving a riskier and less valuable financial product" than they were entitled to, and no one has to show the insurer is about to fail; whether Athene actually is a riskier provider is the merits fight still to come. On AT&T, terminating a plan is a business decision rather than a fiduciary one under ERISA, the selection was delegated, and there are no allegations AT&T "meddled in the selection process, ignored red flags, or failed in their monitoring obligations."

The wave of 401(k) forfeiture lawsuits produced another employer win. Three former employees of United Wholesale Mortgage claimed the plan committee breached its fiduciary duties by using forfeited employer contributions to reduce the company's future contributions instead of paying administrative expenses that participants otherwise bear. On September 23, Judge Susan DeClercq dismissed the case. The plan says the committee "may" use forfeitures for expenses and that amounts not used that way "shall" reduce company contributions, and the court held ERISA's duty of loyalty cannot "convert its permissive language into an obligation." Forfeitures remain plan assets subject to fiduciary duties, the court acknowledged, but nothing in the plan or the statute entitles participants to have them spent on expenses, and pointing to an alternative use does not by itself make the chosen use imprudent. The prohibited-transaction claims failed on Sixth Circuit precedent, though the court noted that courts elsewhere disagree. Here, the court rejected the argument that ERISA required the committee to use forfeitures for expenses when the plan made that use optional.

Three employer groups are urging the Ninth Circuit to uphold dismissal of a lawsuit over AT&T's use of forfeited 401(k) contributions. These are employer contributions employees give up when they leave before becoming fully vested, and the dispute concerns whether AT&T could use that money to reduce future employer contributions instead of paying plan expenses. ERIC, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the American Benefits Council filed the amicus brief in Hernandez v. AT&T Services, one of dozens of similar suits. The district court dismissed the case in August without leave to amend, finding the plan document expressly permitted the practice and that no assets left the plan. The brief's argument is the one sponsors have made from the start: forfeitures may be used for several purposes when the plan allows it, and nothing in ERISA requires fiduciaries to maximize account balances instead of following the plan's terms. Plaintiffs filed 48 forfeiture complaints in 2025, up from 29 in 2024, per Encore Fiduciary, and the Labor Department has filed five briefs on the employer side. AT&T's plan holds more than $43 billion for about 203,000 participants.

Kellanova and FedEx are asking the Supreme Court to hear disputes over how pension plans calculate benefits that continue paying a surviving spouse. The question is whether plans must use reasonable, up-to-date assumptions about life expectancy or can rely on the assumptions written into their plan documents. Kellanova's petition and FedEx's companion petition, both filed September 14, come from a single divided Sixth Circuit decision holding that these spousal annuities must be calculated with reasonably accurate, modern mortality data even where the plan document specifies older tables. The Eleventh Circuit reads the statute the same way, while the D.C. Circuit treats the calculation as pure math under whatever assumptions the plan states. The petitions lean hard on the stakes. Defined benefit plans hold nearly $3 trillion and pay out over $250 billion a year, older mortality tables remain common in plan documents, and settlements in these suits have run from $10 million at CITGO to $59.2 million at Raytheon. Both sets of respondents have waived their right to respond unless the Court requests a response.

A collection fight over surprise-billing arbitration awards has arrived on employers' doorsteps. PHI Health, an air ambulance operator, filed suit in federal court in Indiana on September 15 to collect just over $4.3 million it says Anthem left unpaid on awards issued through the No Surprises Act's independent dispute resolution process. One claim targets the plan sponsors directly. PHI alleges they breached their duties by choosing and keeping Anthem and failing to monitor whether it paid the arbitration awards. That claim names the sponsors, not Anthem. The defendants include roughly 70 employer and union-affiliated plans and their sponsors, among them Eli Lilly, General Motors, Walmart, Kroger, State Farm, Indiana school corporations, and joint union-employer benefit funds. The complaint also claims plan benefits directly under ERISA using payment rights transferred by the patients PHI transported. PHI asks the court to enforce the awards under the No Surprises Act itself or, alternatively, under the Federal Arbitration Act on the theory that participating in the arbitration process creates an enforceable agreement. Whether those statutes allow this kind of collection suit is a disputed question. These are allegations at the filing stage, and no defendant has responded. Self-funded sponsors whose administrators handle these disputes now have a concrete reason to ask how the awards are being paid.

Whether a severance program is an ERISA plan decides where and how disputes over it get fought, and John Deere is arguing its program is not one. Two former employees claim they were entitled to payments from the program the company offered in its 2024 layoffs, a one-time lump sum based on years of service and pay. Deere's motion to dismiss rests on the Supreme Court's Fort Halifax decision: a single payment from a single event, calculated with fixed inputs, requires no ongoing administration and so is not an ERISA plan at all. The company also argues neither plaintiff qualified regardless, one because he was terminated individually rather than in a layoff, the other because he resigned, signed a waiver in exchange for three months of pay, and kept the money. This is a motion, not a ruling. But sponsors design severance on both sides of the Fort Halifax line, sometimes deliberately, and the case is a reminder that the design choice controls everything from claims procedures to which court hears the fight.

A lead mechanic suffered a stroke at home, fell, struck his head, and died three days later. The autopsy called the death an accident caused by the fall, with the stroke contributing. His widow sought the accidental death benefit under the employer's group policy, which pays only for injuries independent of illness, and Hartford denied the claim because the fall followed an acute stroke. The court ruled for Hartford on September 25, concluding that the denial was correct even when reviewed independently. A medical examiner's finding that a death was accidental did not settle the insurance question, because this policy also required the injury to be independent of illness. Participants rarely learn that distinction until a claim, which makes it worth a line in benefits communications.

The out-of-network payment fight can run in either direction, and in this case the insurer was the one suing. United Healthcare sued three Georgia emergency medicine groups affiliated with TeamHealth in 2023, alleging they overcharged patients in employer-sponsored plans for out-of-network services and arguing that ERISA plan terms, not the providers' billed charges, control what gets paid. Hall Benefits Law reports the parties have settled on undisclosed terms and the court has closed the case, with nothing decided on the merits.

Two of the country's largest insurance brokerages now face lawsuits over fees in their own employees' voluntary benefits programs, both brought by the same plaintiffs' firm, Capozzi Adler. Seven Gallagher employees sued Arthur J. Gallagher in Chicago on September 17, and four Marsh & McLennan employees followed in New York on September 25. Both complaints allege the companies helped oversee their employees' benefit plans while also acting as brokers for the coverage, products like life, vision, disability, accident, and legal insurance. Employees paid the premiums through payroll deductions, and the companies collected commissions and administration fees built into those premiums. A Labor Department exemption keeps truly voluntary programs outside ERISA when the employer does not contribute, endorse the program, or profit from it, and the complaints allege each company's involvement and compensation put the programs outside that exemption. According to the Marsh complaint's tables, Marsh and its affiliates received about $8.4 million in life-insurance commissions and administration fees from 2012 through 2024, and commissions alone rose from $75,000 in 2014 to $556,724 in 2015, when the recipient changed to another Marsh subsidiary. NAPA counts eight lawsuits over fees in voluntary employee benefits since last December, and Marsh makes at least nine. The courts have not ruled on these allegations, and neither company has responded.

Every New Jersey separation now gets reported to the state, whether or not the employee files for unemployment. Employers must report resignations, terminations, retirements, and layoffs within seven days through the state labor department's new Employer Response Portal. The obligation comes from a 2022 law that took effect in 2023, but enforcement waited for the state to build the system, and it is separate from and in addition to the BC-10 form given to departing employees. Coverage is broad: any employer with a single New Jersey-based employee is generally in, including out-of-state companies. Access runs through the state's Employer Access System, which requires registering with the company's EIN and an authorization code. HR and payroll teams with New Jersey headcount should build the seven-day report into their offboarding checklist now.

The U.S. fell three places to 24th in Natixis Investment Managers' annual Global Retirement Index, down from 14th a decade ago, with public debt, healthcare costs, and uneven access to workplace savings doing the damage. One number in the coverage says where the pressure lands: 81 percent of investors now say funding retirement is increasingly their own responsibility, up from 63 percent a decade ago. Rankings are blunt instruments, but the direction matches what plan sponsors see in participant behavior, with more expected of the workplace plan every year.