Emily Boyle reports the sponsor-side view of Thursday’s pharmacy benefit manager rule, which requires PBMs serving covered large self-insured health plans, those with 100 or more participants or sponsored by employers with at least 100 employees, to disclose their compensation in dollars before a contract is signed and twice a year after, with audit rights behind the numbers. The rule treats disclosure 90 days in advance as reasonable for contract extensions and renewals, while new contracts require disclosure reasonably in advance of signing. The requirements apply to plan years beginning on or after July 1, 2027, so a calendar-year plan’s first covered year starts January 1, 2028. The window between now and then is time to map PBM contract renewal dates and audit clauses against the new disclosure requirements.

Rebecca Pifer reports on industry reaction to the rule. Employer groups welcomed the disclosure requirements as a long-sought window into drug-pricing middlemen, while the PBM industry called the rule government overreach, positions that preview the lobbying and litigation posture around implementation. The piece carries the Labor Department’s own projection of billions in benefits over a decade, the agency’s modeled estimate, and notes the obligations begin with plan years starting in mid-2027. Benefits teams fielding questions about the rule this week will find the industry fault lines mapped here, including who plans to resist it and on what grounds.

The federal agencies that run the No Surprises Act’s arbitration system issued 26 pages of guidance on when payment disputes can be batched together or bundled, complete with a decision tree and service-code tables. The two sets of provisions run on different clocks. The bundling provisions have applied since the underlying rules took effect August 3, while the batching criteria apply to disputes whose open negotiation period begins on or after November 1, days away. One clarification lands directly on employers that fund their own health plans. Different self-insured plans do not become the same payer just because they hire the same third-party administrator, so claims across those plans generally cannot be batched as if one entity were paying. Plan administrators handling out-of-network disputes should route the guidance to whoever manages arbitration intake before the November 1 start.

Foster Swift’s alert focuses on what the overhauled correction program changes for an employer fixing a plan mistake. Revenue Procedure 2026-34 replaced the 2021 version of the program and took effect October 22, folding in the SECURE 2.0 changes and widening self-correction, though only for eligible inadvertent failures corrected on time by sponsors with established compliance procedures. The expanded self-correction rules reach a broader range of errors, including certain plan document failures, demographic failures, employer eligibility failures and plan loan failures, provided the plan has established compliance practices in place and the failure is corrected within a reasonable period. Which errors can now be fixed without a filing, and which still require the voluntary correction program with its fees and IRS review, is the operating question every plan administrator should re-answer under the new rules.

The Wagner Law Group’s alert covers the new IRA correction program alongside the changes for employer retirement plans. Revenue Procedure 2026-33 creates the first formal IRS correction program for IRAs, a voluntary filing program covering four specified failure categories that opens May 1, 2027 and does not offer self-correction. The four covered failures are missed required minimum distributions caused by a service provider’s error, IRAs opened as the wrong account type, nonspouse beneficiaries who received a distribution or rollover instead of a direct transfer to an inherited IRA, and missed 60-day rollovers where denying relief would be inequitable. The absence of a formal program until now never meant IRA errors had no fixes, and the alert explains how the new program sits alongside the correction routes custodians and owners already used. Plan sponsors get the companion summary of Revenue Procedure 2026-34, effective October 22.

Haynes Boone’s alert answers the scope question. Revenue Procedure 2026-34 modifies and supersedes the 2021 revenue procedure while keeping the familiar architecture of self-correction, voluntary correction and audit closing agreements, and it reaches qualified plans, 403(b) plans, SEPs and SIMPLE IRA plans, the full roster of arrangements whose sponsors can use the program. For a benefits committee that wants to confirm its plan types are covered and which of the three programs applies to a given mistake before counsel walks through the details, this alert provides that orientation.

Foley & Lardner walks through the SEC’s September 30 package of proposals meant to expand what the agency calls the responsible retailization of private markets. These are proposals, not final rules, and they do not approve private assets for any particular 401(k) menu. They would widen the channels through which retail-facing funds reach private assets, the same current pulling at defined contribution menus this year. Among the specifics, eligible closed-end funds and business development companies could offer multiple share classes without individual exemptive relief, and interval funds could move to monthly repurchase windows under a more flexible liquidity standard. Fiduciaries weighing private-asset options continue to answer to existing prudence standards while the proposals work through comments.

The EEOC adopted a strategic plan for fiscal years 2026 through 2030 on August 26, setting operational goals for the enforcement priorities the agency named in June. The plan creates no new employer obligations. The authors’ point is that private litigants press the same themes in court, so the agency’s priorities preview claim patterns beyond the agency’s own docket. For the people who administer leave and accommodation requests, two points stand out. The enforcement priorities elevate religious accommodation and Pregnant Workers Fairness Act liability. The plan also raises the agency’s target for non-monetary relief, with 97 percent of conciliation agreements and favorable litigation resolutions expected to include targeted equitable relief. In practice that can mean new policies, customized training and external monitoring. Their advice is to revisit religious accommodation procedures now and to expect those non-monetary terms in any resolution with the agency.

Employers that sponsor more than one retirement plan routinely buy services that benefit several plans at once, and BDO addresses the question that follows. How should the shared cost be split? The methodologies run from equal division to per-participant, asset-based and benefit-based approaches, and no single method is required. What fiduciaries need is a reasoned basis for the method they choose, consistent application, documentation and periodic reassessment. Documentation supports a proper allocation but cannot cure charging a plan for costs that belong to the employer, the settlor side of the line. Sponsors with multiple plans and one invoice should be able to say today how that invoice gets divided and why.

When a pension plan hands its obligations to an insurer through a group annuity purchase, the fiduciary’s safest-available-annuity analysis has to reach the insurer’s structure, not just its ratings. This contributor piece proposes a durability framework. Trace how risk moves through the insurer’s affiliated reinsurance arrangements, identify where policyholder protections are strongest, and ask how benefits would actually be assured under stress. The framework is the author’s rather than a legal standard, and the questions align with what pension risk transfer litigation keeps probing, so committees planning a transfer can borrow the diligence list before their annuity selection.

DCIIA research synthesizing plan data from 2013 through 2023 finds the big changes in 401(k) investing happened inside existing menus rather than through redesign. Target date funds now hold roughly half of defined contribution assets, index investing keeps expanding, participant costs keep falling, and smaller plans have narrowed the gap with large ones on fees and fund quality. Menus remain heavier in equity offerings than fixed income, with assets increasingly concentrated in U.S. stocks. The synthesis draws on earlier papers and datasets rather than fresh 2026 numbers. For committees, it is benchmarking context for the next menu review, including the researchers’ question of whether participant portfolios are positioned appropriately as retirement approaches.

Annual plan audits cost more and run longer when the sponsor’s records make the auditor dig. Drawing on guidance from a Sikich principal, this piece collects the practical moves that cut audit cost and regulatory risk. Keep payroll, contribution and distribution data reconciled through the year rather than at audit time, understand what documentation the auditor will need before fieldwork starts, and coordinate early among payroll, HR and the recordkeeper. None of it is new law, and all of it is the difference between an audit that confirms plan operations and one that turns into a billable reconstruction project.

LIMRA survey research finds that one in eight workers whose health premiums rose this year responded by contributing less to retirement accounts, a self-reported tradeoff concentrated among younger workers. The denominator matters. That is one in eight of the workers who saw increases, not of all workers. The context is the squeeze employers already see coming, with KFF projecting marketplace premiums to jump about 15 percent next year and employer plan costs climbing too. LIMRA’s researchers argue healthcare planning belongs inside retirement planning rather than beside it. For sponsors, the finding is an early warning that 2027 health-cost increases may surface in 401(k) deferral reports.

The International Foundation’s review of the 2026 proxy season flags three shifts for pension trustees who vote shares or oversee those who do. Shareholder proposals overall fell to a five-year low while governance proposals surged to a five-year high with the strongest investor support. The SEC announced on August 14 that it would exit its traditional role refereeing shareholder-proposal disputes and has moved to unwind the rule behind that process, a change still in the proposal stage. And several companies reincorporated out of Delaware, which alters the shareholder protections behind portfolio holdings. Proxy voting remains a fiduciary function under Labor Department guidance, so trustees should expect their proxy policies and their managers’ voting records to deserve a fresh look this cycle.

Hall Benefits Law recaps founder Anne Tyler Hall’s panel for a Georgia CPA chapter on the benefit-plan warning signs accountants are positioned to catch first. CPAs see payroll data, financial statements and tax filings before anyone else, which makes them an early tripwire for problems like late deposits, misapplied definitions of compensation and plan documents that no longer match operations. A well-run plan has a CPA, a benefits broker, an investment advisor and ERISA counsel who actually talk to each other, and the recap’s list of call-your-lawyer moments gives sponsors a screen for when informal advice stops being enough.

Workers often re-enroll in last year’s plan without asking whether their costs or coverage changed, and HR Dive’s reporting explains one reason why. Employees fear that using or even asking about healthcare invites discrimination, a worry EBRI’s Paul Fronstin describes around genetic conditions, mental health and fertility care. The practical advice is about formats. Small-group sessions, varied channels and normalizing questions reach people who will never raise a hand on an all-staff call. With enrollment season open now, benefits teams still have time to add a low-pressure way for employees to ask before elections lock.

When an employee is ready to accept addiction treatment, the window is often short, and the plan’s utilization rules decide what happens inside it. Built on interviews with a treatment provider, this piece urges employers to ask insurers how stays are authorized and reviewed. The interviewed provider describes a typical initial authorization of four to seven days, the starting increment an insurer approves before re-review, not the length of treatment an employee ultimately receives. The employer stake is concrete. Premature cutoffs show up later as relapse, lost trained workers and higher medical spend, and renewal season is when plans can press for clinically sound review criteria.

Accident, critical illness, cancer and hospital indemnity policies are usually offered as voluntary benefits on the theory that ERISA does not apply, and TruePlan’s Bernard Gleeson and Amanda Humphrey explain why that theory needs periodic checking. The Labor Department’s safe harbor keeps a voluntary program outside ERISA only while the employer stays genuinely hands-off, with no employer contributions, no endorsement and only limited administrative involvement. Employers have faced litigation when their involvement outgrew the safe harbor. Falling outside the safe harbor does not automatically make a program an ERISA plan, but it removes the easy answer. The authors recommend reviewing voluntary offerings deliberately, documenting the structure, and deciding on purpose which side of the line each program lives on.

Leap Health chief executive Hani Elias argues that lower drug prices alone won’t solve employers’ specialty-care costs. As the federal government tests most-favored-nation pricing, which pegs certain U.S. drug prices to lower prices abroad, his point is that a manufacturer’s price is one layer of what a plan pays. Site-of-care markups, infusion administration and distribution costs can swamp the savings a price cut delivers, so where treatment happens drives spend as much as what the drug costs. The projections are his, and the layered-cost frame gives benefits teams a sharper question for any vendor promising that one pricing reform will tame specialty spend.

Writing in Fast Company, Venbrook benefits executive Alison Myers offers employers four renewal-season moves. Audit what employees actually use, price alternatives beyond the incumbent carrier, rethink one-size plan design, and communicate in plain language. The piece also floats extending benefits toward contract workers, a step that can affect worker-classification analysis and belongs in counsel’s hands before it reaches a renewal checklist. The budgeting posture arrives at the right moment, with most employers finalizing 2027 plan designs now.

Employee Benefit News reports on small employers using individual coverage health reimbursement arrangements, the ICHRA structure that reimburses employees who buy their own individual-market policies instead of enrolling in a group plan. The appeal for small businesses is predictable budgeting without carrier underwriting. StretchDollar chief executive Marshall Darr, whose company administers these arrangements, notes that large companies have infrastructure small employers lack. Employees navigating hundreds of individual plans alone can choose badly, so administration and decision support decide whether an ICHRA actually serves the workforce. Fall renewal season is when small-group employers face the question.

TruePlan’s overview arrives as employers stare down another year of health-cost growth, with KFF putting average family premiums at $26,993 for 2025 and Mercer projecting employer health costs to rise 8.2 percent in 2027 even after planned cost cutting. Authors Bernard Gleeson and Amanda Humphrey position telehealth as an access and affordability lever rather than a cure. The legal questions matter as much as the pricing. Telehealth programs can count as group health plans under ERISA, can affect employees’ eligibility for health savings account contributions, and run into state licensing rules, each worth a counsel check before a standalone offering is added.

With the midterm elections set for Tuesday, November 3, Bradley’s guide walks employers through the patchwork of state voting-leave laws. The rules vary on everything that matters. Whether leave is required at all, whether it is paid, how many hours, whether the employee must request it in advance, and whether a notice must be posted all depend on the state, and some laws apply only when an employee lacks enough non-working time while polls are open. Multistate employers have days to confirm which rules cover which workforces and to brief managers before schedules collide with polling hours.

Squire Patton Boggs’s October roundup gathers a month of state and local employment-law movement, and the leave entries carry direct plan consequences. The District of Columbia temporarily reduced paid family and medical leave benefits from 12 workweeks to six, with parental leave unchanged at 12. San Francisco shortened the employment period required to qualify for supplemental pay under its paid parental leave ordinance from 180 days to 90, starting January 1, 2027 for employers with 100 or more employees and January 1, 2028 for employers with 20 to 99. California expanded Paid Family Leave eligibility for military families’ qualifying exigencies, starting July 1, 2028, or sooner if the state finishes specified updates to its claims system first. The roundup also tracks artificial intelligence rules, hiring laws, minimum-wage increases and poster updates across jurisdictions, worth a pass before year-end handbook and leave-policy updates.

The split judgment in the Trader Joe’s 401(k) case is headed to the First Circuit from both directions. In Stephan v. Trader Joe’s, the September 28 judgment after a rare bench trial ordered the company to restore $715,264 to the plan plus $471,957 in prejudgment interest over recordkeeping fees, while the company won the forfeiture and investment claims. On October 28 the defendants noticed an appeal expressly challenging the surcharge, the interest and the adverse findings behind them, and the plaintiffs filed their own notice appealing the judgment without specifying issues. Which rulings each side actually presses will wait for the briefs. For plan committees, one of the few 401(k) fee cases ever tried is now one to watch on appeal.

The U.S. Attorney in Manhattan filed suit against Google on October 29 on behalf of Mark Davisson, an Army Reserve officer who worked as a key account executive before his military leave. The complaint under USERRA, the federal law guaranteeing servicemembers their jobs and status after qualifying leave, alleges Google did not restore Davisson’s accounts when he returned in May 2023. He spent about six months without defined responsibilities while searching internally for a role. Google later placed him on a different sales team, which the government alleges did not provide comparable status, responsibility and advancement opportunities. These are allegations Google has not yet answered. The government filing is itself the message for employers. Reemployment after military leave means restoring responsibilities and standing, not just a title and a paycheck, and the Justice Department brings these cases directly.

In a published decision, New Jersey’s Appellate Division held on October 29 that USERRA’s five-year cumulative limit on protected military leave does not preempt New Jersey statutes giving public employees more, and that state law protected an Atlantic City police officer’s service beyond the federal period. The opinion affirms the Civil Service Commission’s reversal of Brian McDevitt’s removal, with reinstatement, mitigated back pay and benefits. The court reasoned that USERRA sets a floor and encourages employers to go beyond it. The decision binds New Jersey public employers rather than creating a general private-employer rule, and the court left broader unlimited-leave questions for another day. Government plan sponsors in the state should check how their leave and benefits-continuation policies treat service past the federal cap.

Ruling on cross-motions brought by a coalition of states led by Massachusetts, a federal judge on October 29 struck one piece of the CMS interim final rule implementing Medicaid’s new community-engagement requirements and upheld the rest of what the states challenged. The decision vacates the requirement that people in the statute’s protected medical categories also show their condition significantly impairs their ability to meet the work requirements, holding that add-on contrary to the statute, while upholding the rule’s 12-month lookback for claims data and its limits on self-attestation. The court also granted the states a six-month enforcement stay for medical-frailty determinations, without moving the statutory January 1, 2027 implementation date. The employer-plan connection runs through dependents and lower-wage workers who cycle between employer coverage and Medicaid, and losing Medicaid eligibility gives an otherwise eligible worker or dependent a special enrollment right into the employer’s plan.

Momentum’s litigation note maps a young wave of ERISA class actions claiming employers offered PPO options that were financially dominated, meaning a cheaper option in the menu beat them on total cost once premiums and cost sharing were added up. Four cases fit the pattern, against Northwestern University, the University of Rochester and two against Abbott Laboratories, resting on prudence, disclosure and monitoring theories, with some complaints naming individual HR and benefits executives personally. Only the Northwestern case has produced a ruling. On April 2, 2026 the court denied the university’s motion to dismiss in a minute entry, stating its reasons in open court, and the case is now in discovery. A denied dismissal motion tests only the complaint’s plausibility, not the merits. Health-plan fiduciaries pricing multiple tiers for 2027 should be able to show someone compared the options’ total costs the way these complaints do.

PLANSPONSOR reports on the October 20 complaint in which Aramark, Whirlpool, Grainger, Kraft Heinz, Ralph Lauren and Sterling Jewelers accuse UnitedHealth affiliates of misusing their self-funded plans’ assets through undisclosed fees, affiliate favoritism and cross-plan offsets. Everything in the complaint remains allegation. The complaint describes MultiPlan as an outside repricing company United engages for out-of-network claims. For sponsors, the allegations underscore the importance of understanding administrative fees, access to claims data, and how their administrator handles payments across plans.

California’s restriction on stay-or-pay arrangements, the Business and Professions Code section that limits requiring workers to repay money when they leave, now applies to contracts entered into on or after January 1, 2027 instead of 2026, under AB 1697, signed September 30 as an urgency measure. Latham’s alert walks through the amended exceptions. The bonus exception no longer requires that the agreement be struck at the outset of employment, which strengthens the case for retention and mid-employment incentives, and a new exception covers repayment arrangements for licensed securities, insurance and investment-advisory professionals under specified conditions, including a separate agreement and at least five business days to consult counsel. Agreements signed in 2026 under the old rules may remain enforceable in the firm’s reading. Employers should review California repayment agreements before entering into new arrangements in 2027.

Nixon Peabody’s Seth Neulight surveys the employment laws California enacted this year, most taking effect January 1, 2027. Two changes reach leave and compensation administration directly. The state’s bereavement leave entitlement of up to five days will extend to the death of a designated person, anyone related to the employee by blood or whose association with the employee is the equivalent of a family relationship, identified by the employee when requesting the leave, and an employer may limit an employee to one designated person per 12-month period. And the stay-or-pay restrictions on repayment agreements, delayed by AB 1697, will apply to contracts entered into on or after January 1, 2027, making covered repayment terms void and exposing employers to the greater of actual damages or $5,000 per employee, with exceptions that include qualifying tuition contracts and certain licensed financial-services professionals. The rest of the alert, minimum-wage increases, workplace-surveillance limits and new artificial-intelligence rules among them, is useful context for year-end handbook updates.

Eversheds Sutherland’s quarterly catch-up rounds up third-quarter benefits developments in checklist form. The entries include the August 7 Treasury and IRS notice previewing Saver’s Match regulations, the federal matching contribution that replaces the Saver’s Credit for taxable years beginning after December 31, 2026, alongside retirement, health-plan and executive-compensation items from the quarter. These are developments from the past quarter organized for review rather than new rules, and the mental-health-parity entry turns on announced nonenforcement of a rule, an exercise of agency discretion rather than a repeal of the statute. A quarter-end sweep like this is how benefits teams confirm nothing slipped past their own trackers.

Faegre Drinker’s roundup of California’s 2026 legislative session covers the employer-facing laws taking effect in 2027 and beyond, spanning benefits-adjacent changes, leave entitlements, pay and hiring rules and new minimum-wage ordinances. Among the entries with benefits consequences, the session’s stay-or-pay changes now apply to contracts entered into on or after January 1, 2027, and the state expanded Paid Family Leave eligibility for military families starting July 1, 2028, or sooner if specified state claims-system updates finish first. The changes take effect on different dates in 2027 and beyond, so multistate employers with California headcount should pull the entries matching their policies and calendar each effective date.