Candace Finn untangles which SECURE and SECURE 2.0 amendments are actually due December 31, 2026, drawing on the IRS’s recent clarification. For required changes, the IRS’s annual amendment list helps determine when the paperwork is due, and a provision does not land on that list until the underlying guidance is settled. The Roth catch-up requirement, for example, is expected on the 2027 list, which would push its amendment deadline out to the end of 2029, and future lists are expected to cover automatic enrollment, long-term part-time employees and remaining required minimum distribution changes. More time to amend the document does not mean more time to comply with the underlying requirement, which applies on its own schedule. Discretionary provisions are the ones still on the 2026 clock. Under Notice 2024-2, optional SECURE 2.0 features a plan already operates, such as Roth employer contributions, generally must be documented by December 31, 2026. Finn’s practical warning is to resist checking every optional box in the amendment package, because a provision the recordkeeper and payroll system cannot administer is a plan document saying one thing while operations say another.

The White House marked the formal launch of Trump Accounts this week, with roughly 60 million children registered through the auto-enrollment added late in the program’s design and $1,000 in seed money for eligible children. Since the July 4 start the accounts have taken in more than $4.5 billion, including $1.3 billion in seed contributions, $600 million from families and $2.6 billion in philanthropic gifts, the latter anchored by a $6.25 billion commitment from Michael and Susan Dell. Family and friends may contribute up to $5,000 a year, and employers may contribute up to $2,500 within that cap. For sponsors, Aon’s Melissa Elbert points to Treasury’s continued support for running dependent contributions through a Section 125 cafeteria plan, which she calls a middle ground that lets employers facilitate participation through existing benefits infrastructure even if they never contribute a dollar themselves.

Haynes Boone distills the sponsor to-do list from the Fourth Circuit’s Kelly v. Altria decision, which applied the dictionary meaning of operate and held that the administrative services agreement between Fidelity and the plan sponsor is a document under which the plan is operated, and therefore must be furnished to a participant on written request under ERISA section 104(b)(4). The firm notes the holding conflicts with the line of cases, including the Ninth Circuit’s Hughes decision, that limit required disclosures to documents describing plan terms, administration or finances. Inventory the agreements under which your plan actually runs, check their confidentiality clauses against a disclosure obligation they may not have anticipated, and include them when answering document requests, because the cost of guessing wrong is statutory penalties that accrue daily.

MetLife’s 2026 pension risk transfer poll surveyed 250 defined benefit plan sponsors with at least $100 million in assets and goals to reduce pension risk. Among those sponsors, 88 percent are considering transferring obligations to an insurer and 80 percent plan to shed their pension liabilities entirely within five years, and among the sponsors open to an insurer deal, 32 percent expect to complete one within two years. Half name interest rates as the top catalyst, and the share ranking an insurer’s financial strength as the leading selection factor jumped to 65 percent from 33 percent a year ago. October Three’s companion survey of insurers reports that full plan terminations made up 66 percent of these transactions in the first half of 2026, and that deals covering only retirees already receiving benefits made up another 28 percent. Milliman puts the competitive cost of buying annuities for retirees at 99.9 percent of the liabilities recorded for accounting purposes, the fourth straight month below 100 percent. The insurers’ chief complaint lands on sponsors. Incomplete participant data was the top obstacle to onboarding for 72 percent of carriers.

Financial pressure is affecting workers’ retirement savings and their performance at work, EBN reports from Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s 2026 retirement survey. The survey of 5,106 people found the share increasing their retirement savings fell to 39 percent from 55 percent, the largest single-year drop in six years, while nearly 70 percent have delayed a major financial goal and 66 percent of Gen Z, millennial and Gen X respondents expect to delay retirement. Inside the workplace, 54 percent say money worries make it hard to focus at work, 32 percent missed work in the past year over a financial problem, 34 percent are likely to job-hunt mainly to improve their finances, and 61 percent work a second job, mostly out of need. The bright spot is planning. Among the 64 percent with a personalized retirement plan, 72 percent believe they are on track, versus 33 percent without one, and Goldman’s strategists pitch that gap as a plan design question. Strain also does not fade with income. Workers earning above $300,000 report living paycheck to paycheck more often than those in the middle of the income range.

Kevin Crain of the Institutional Retirement Income Council argues the industry’s own vocabulary is a barrier to retirement income adoption, citing research in which 72 percent of respondents wanted an annuity presented as payments for spending but only 21 percent wanted the identical product presented as an investment. His proposed language framework treats retirement income as a category rather than a product, and draws hard lines the marketplace currently blurs. Guaranteed income requires a contractual guarantee, protected income does not mean guaranteed, and a systematic withdrawal program cannot be sold as a paycheck for life unless it is built to last a lifetime with a disclosed guarantee. Crain, a former recordkeeper executive, says most of the jargon originated with recordkeepers and providers, and points to the Social Security claiming-age terminology bill awaiting signature as evidence that even entrenched language can be standardized.

State auto-IRA mandates keep pushing small employers to choose between the state program and a plan of their own, and recordkeeper 401GO argues the industry’s disconnected technology systems are not ready for the volume. In Colorado, new plans jumped to 18.4 percent of the state’s private-sector plans in the year SecureSavings launched, from 12.6 percent the year before, and two more deadlines arrive soon, Rhode Island’s RISavers on October 15 and Minnesota’s Secure Choice on December 31. The coverage gap the mandates target remains wide, with 59 percent of workers at businesses under 100 employees having plan access against 91 percent at employers of 500 or more.

PLANSPONSOR walks through what the amended Transparency in Coverage rules change for employer plans. Machine-readable pricing files move from monthly to quarterly updates and from one file per plan to one per provider network, ghost rates for provider and service combinations unlikely to occur come out, the threshold for reporting out-of-network data drops to 11 claims from 20, participants gain the right to cost-sharing estimates by phone, and negotiated rates must be stated in dollars rather than formulas. The piece reads the package as making the files easier to navigate at the price of less plan-specific visibility, and it highlights a governance change sponsors should note. A CEO, president or similarly authorized official must attest to the accuracy of the reported information. One caution for compliance calendars. The piece gives a December 5 effective date, while the Federal Register text says December 7.

EBRI and Greenwald Research surveyed 1,238 workers ages 21 to 64 in late June and July for the seventh annual edition of this survey. Concern eased slightly across every well-being measure, with financial worry at 6.0 on a 10-point scale, down from its 2022 high of 6.9, yet 70 percent of workers report problematic debt and 57 percent say they often or always feel sick at work. Workers pointed to retirement plans and health insurance as their leading sources of financial security, at 64 and 63 percent, while only 52 percent are very or extremely satisfied with their benefits package and 45 percent name a bigger employer contribution as the most valuable improvement. Two findings deserve a benefits manager’s attention. A quarter of insured workers now say their plan covers GLP-1 drugs for weight loss, up from 16 percent last year, and 45 percent agree employers should cover them. And on AI, 71 percent are concerned about bias in AI tools used for benefit recommendations, while given the choice only 15 percent would pick an AI-powered benefits counselor over a human one.

KFF maps this year’s marketplace contraction district by district. The number of people with active marketplace coverage fell from 21.8 million to 19.2 million by February, a 12 percent drop and the first decline in seven years, after the enhanced premium tax credits expired, and one in ten of last year’s enrollees reports becoming uninsured. For those who stayed, average premium payments rose 58 percent and deductibles about $1,000. The political geography is the story. Republican-held districts account for 55 percent of current enrollees but 67 percent of the decline, and the districts with the heaviest marketplace reliance sit in Florida, Texas and Georgia, where enrollment approaches 30 percent of the population in several South Florida seats. For employers in those markets, the individual market’s churn is the backdrop for this fall’s dependent and part-timer coverage questions.

The number that frames the season comes from Alera Group’s annual employer benchmark. 84 percent of employers reported premium increases, up from 81 percent last year, and 34 percent of those saw spikes of 11 to 20 percent, making this one of the steepest renewal cycles in years. Alera’s Nicole Negvesky says the notable pattern is employers absorbing the increase rather than passing it to employees, then layering on supplemental products, accident, critical illness, cancer and long-term care coverage, to blunt out-of-pocket exposure under higher-deductible designs. Her warning is that those products only earn their premium if employees know they exist and when to use them, which argues for year-round communication instead of a two-week enrollment sprint, and for communications that say plainly how each program pays off and how to reach it.

Ahead of World Mental Health Day on October 10, the Wellness Alliance’s Ashton DeMoss turns this year’s theme into employer practice. The argument is that employees with lived experience of mental health conditions should help shape the policies and benefits meant to support them, not just share stories at awareness events. The concrete suggestions include peer-led resource groups, genuine input channels into benefits and communications decisions, and a review of leave, accommodation and return-to-work policies through a mental health lens.

Judge Christopher Boyko’s 21-page order in Kiles v. Goodyear splits the workers’ challenge to the tire maker’s nicotine surcharge. The notice claim survives. Plaintiffs allege Goodyear’s plan materials describing the surcharge omitted the required statement that an employee’s own physician’s recommendations would be accommodated as a reasonable alternative, and the court held that omission, if proven, makes the surcharge itself unlawful, giving everyone who paid it standing through direct monetary harm. The opinion’s reach extends past Goodyear. The court rejected the argument that the physician-accommodation regulation cannot be enforced after Loper Bright, the Supreme Court decision that ended judicial deference to agencies’ legal interpretations, holding the rule is a clarification that fills in the details of the statute’s notice requirement. The fiduciary and prohibited transaction claims were dismissed. In this court’s view, designing and collecting a surcharge is a decision the company makes as employer rather than as plan fiduciary, and the complaint alleged harm to employees rather than losses to the plan. A request to amend buried in the opposition brief was denied for not being a proper motion. The class allegedly paid $17.4 million in surcharges from 2020 through 2025, and discovery now begins on the claim that survived.

Air ambulance operator PHI Health has sued Anthem’s Missouri Blue Cross affiliates, three employers and their health plans over nearly $298,000 in allegedly unpaid surprise-billing arbitration awards. The employers are Astec Industries, Essential Services and TKM Group. Filed October 7, the complaint follows a similar Kentucky suit filed the previous day. The suit again asks the court to order the awards paid, and again alleges the employer sponsors kept Anthem as administrator despite public warning signs, including the roughly $30 million in more than 1,200 awards PHI says Anthem owes it nationwide. Missouri adds state-law teeth the Kentucky complaint lacked, a vexatious refusal count and a prompt-pay count that accrues interest at 1 percent a month plus a daily penalty. The complaint also alleges Anthem cut its in-network rate offer to PHI by 39.6 percent on mileage and 15.3 percent on liftoff charges after the nonpayment campaign began, which PHI casts as economic pressure to accept below-market rates. These are allegations, and no court has ruled on them. But two suits in two days naming employer fiduciaries over an administrator’s unpaid awards looks less like a one-off and more like a litigation strategy.

The complaint against Rockland Trust alleges that the T. Rowe Price Growth Stock Fund, in the bank’s 401(k) menu since 2016, suffered more than $33 billion in net investor outflows from 2016 through 2025, including $3.4 billion last year, and that a prudent fiduciary would have treated that exodus as a red flag. The plan held about $56 million of its $300 million in the fund across 2,326 participants as of the end of 2024. Almeida Law Group filed the case one day after the Supreme Court heard Anderson v. Intel, and PLANADVISER places it squarely in that pleading-standard fight, noting the Labor Department and American Benefits Council amicus briefs arguing that poor performance alone does not prove a fiduciary breach.

An Amazon warehouse associate, representing himself, reported three workplace injuries, was denied benefits on each, and sued more than a year after the final denial. Roberts Disability walks through why the late suit survived. For disability claims subject to the newer Labor Department rules, final denial letters must disclose any plan-imposed deadline to sue, including the calendar date it expires. None of Amazon’s three final denials did, so the court applied Texas’s four-year contract period instead. The court also found that denying the second injury for lack of a new accident ignored the plan’s separate coverage for cumulative trauma, an abuse of discretion that still produced no money because the employee proved no unpaid benefits. On the $6,050 penalty for the plan document sent as an unopenable email attachment, negligence was enough, and the court weighed how the missing document impaired the employee’s ability to contest the denials.

Roberts Disability breaks down Wright v. Hartford, a Kentucky federal decision with an uncomfortable fact pattern. After her divorce, an employee called her employer’s benefits line to ask what to do and was told she could not stop her dependent life election until open enrollment and that the coverage would stay in force. Premiums kept coming out of her paycheck. When her former husband died, the claim was denied because the policy defines a spouse as someone not divorced from the employee, and the employer refunded the premiums while acknowledging the bad advice. The court dismissed everything at the pleading stage. Coverage ended at divorce under the plain policy terms regardless of the continued deductions. The court also rejected the employee’s other claims for relief. Under the legal rules it applied, the employer’s incorrect advice did not override the policy’s clear terms, and the premiums had already been refunded. The employer escaped liability, but the lesson for sponsors is about the phone line. A wrong answer at a qualifying event did not create coverage here, and it did create two years of litigation.

More than 90 former Ruby Tuesday executives lost their supplemental retirement savings when the restaurant chain went through bankruptcy in 2020, and they have been trying to recover the money from Regions Bank, the plans’ trustee, ever since. The Sixth Circuit ended their case by holding that their request for surcharge, meaning compensation for losses allegedly caused by the trustee’s breach of duty, was really a claim for money damages that ERISA does not allow. Invited to weigh in on their Supreme Court petition in Aldridge v. Regions Bank, the Solicitor General filed a brief in late August agreeing that the Sixth Circuit conflated surcharge with damages and got the law wrong, yet urging the Court to deny review anyway. The plans here are top-hat plans for executives, which sit outside ERISA’s fiduciary rules, so the government sees the case as a poor vehicle for resolving when surcharge is available. The justices are scheduled to consider the petition at their October 9 conference. For deferred compensation participants the practical lesson stands either way. Top-hat plans leave executives as unsecured creditors when the employer fails, and the remedies afterward are thin.

The voluntary benefits suit against Macy’s and Aon ended with a one-line notice of dismissal filed September 30, three months after the July complaint, without prejudice and without explanation. The dismissal did not decide whether the allegations have merit. What set the case apart was its method. Bailey & Glasser assembled Form 5500 data from more than 16,000 employers to argue that the broker compensation built into Macy’s workers’ premiums, 36.7 percent on average over six years, ran far above a market median of roughly 20 percent. And it used Aon’s own placements as the yardstick, pointing to Target, where Aon reported $214 in total commissions on roughly $10 million of premiums for the same products through the same carrier, in the same year its entities collected 50.8 percent of premiums at Macy’s.

Encore Fiduciary and Davis & Harman catalog the Anderson argument justice by justice and set it inside the circuit split, with the Second, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Tenth Circuits requiring a meaningful benchmark in fee or underperformance cases while the Sixth and Eleventh do not. Two threads stand out in their account. Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch pressed whether poor performance alone can ever show a breach, given that the duty of prudence is about a fiduciary’s process, and Justice Kagan pushed for the Court to say what meaningful requires, worrying that some lower courts already demand comparator funds with identical asset allocations, which she suggested goes too far.

The first wave of what-now commentary after the Anderson argument splits on whether fiduciaries should change anything before the decision. Plaintiff-side litigator Charles Field would have committees direct their consultants to compare each fund against a handful of alternatives with genuinely similar risk and objectives, on the theory that the benchmark question is coming for sponsors either way. Sidley’s Caroline Wong counters that the underlying prudence standards have not changed and the win is likely to be uniformity, with defendants nationwide able to make the same motion to dismiss arguments. The sleeper angle is regulatory. The Labor Department’s pending alternative-assets safe harbor proposal lists performance benchmarking among its factors, the Solicitor General’s office told the justices the DOL would welcome guidance on what meaningful means, and Simpson Thacher’s Erica Rozow expects the agency to hold its final rule until the opinion lands.

Brian Anderson’s argument wrap collects the practitioner consensus that the justices found common ground quickly on requiring some comparator with similar aims, leaving the real fight over how much content the word meaningful should carry. Troutman Pepper’s Emily Zimmer flags the exchanges over Intel’s documented risk-mitigation objective as a reminder that a clearly recorded investment rationale matters under any standard. SCOTUSblog’s Ronald Mann read the second half of the argument as the justices asking counsel for drafting advice on an affirmance and predicts a brisk, likely unanimous decision that could arrive well before the usual June crunch.

KFF’s new survey of women ages 18 to 49 puts numbers on the leave gaps employers are asked to fill. Among recently employed mothers, 52 percent took paid parental leave, 35 percent took only unpaid leave and 13 percent took none at all, and more than a third of leave-takers were back within eight weeks. Mothers still shoulder much more of the caregiving. When a child is sick, 58 percent of working mothers say they usually stay home, against 20 percent of fathers, and 53 percent of those mothers lose pay to do it, rising to 76 percent among lower-income households. Support from employers could influence decisions about having children, with 43 percent of women saying employer-provided paid parental leave or childcare support would make having a child more likely, a figure that climbs past 70 percent among women already considering children. The survey fielded in March and April with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 points.

Hunton Andrews Kurth covers two California employment laws signed September 27. SB 1149, effective January 1, 2027, extends the CFRA’s five days of bereavement leave beyond the enumerated family list to a designated person, meaning anyone related by blood or whose association is the equivalent of family, a definition loose enough to cover a close friend. The drafting wrinkle matters for leave administrators. Employers may cap designated-person bereavement at one leave per 12-month period, a cap that does not exist for spouses, children or other enumerated relations, and the leave must still be completed within three months of the death. AB 1803 then folds anti-hate-speech content into the existing biennial harassment training starting January 1, 2028, with no added hours and no separate curriculum required, and existing training may already satisfy it. The firm’s advice is to audit current training materials before building anything new.

Jeff Crowell of OpenArc and Brian McDonald of Grantd name the gap between equity plan administration and equity comprehension. Recordkeeper portals show employees what they own, when it vests and what transactions are available, but not what the award means for their taxes, cash needs or concentration risk, and employees tend not to ask, partly because the questions feel too basic and partly because selling company stock feels like oversharing with the employer. The authors argue for individualized guidance kept separate from plan administration, surfacing an approaching option expiration or a tax withholding shortfall before it becomes urgent, with a clean handoff to a financial adviser when an equity question becomes a household planning question.

Eric Altholz offers a plain-English tour of what employee benefits lawyers do and when to call one, from plan design choices through the correction programs that exist because everyone eventually needs them. He also flags a privilege trap. Legal advice about administering a plan may be discoverable by the plan’s own participants under the fiduciary exception to attorney-client privilege. Employers should ask counsel which communications are protected, and check before forwarding sensitive legal advice to vendors.

EBN’s award-winner roundup is a working catalog of enrollment season tactics from benefits managers at LandCare, BMO, Koch, Aflac and a handful of nonprofits. The common thread is retiring the two-week crash course in favor of year-round education, so enrollment becomes, in one manager’s phrase, a confirmation of informed decisions. Koch uses data to place its on-site enrollment events and tracks selection remorse as the thing to minimize, the University of Pittsburgh targets communications by age, tenure and enrollment history instead of one-size-fits-all blasts, a Louisiana health system is building its campaign around new state pharmacy laws that change what employees pay per fill, and a nonprofit set a measurable goal of a 5 percent increase in dependent care FSA enrollment. Aflac’s benefits chief supplies the market datapoint, with supplemental insurance offered by 31 percent of employers while 95 percent of employees call it essential.