BENEFITS DIGEST

Learn why cybersecurity now belongs in the boardroom and what public pension trustees should be asking about governance.

CMS reopened the HHS-administered federal external review process effective July 31 after a month of unavailability. Consumers whose deadline to request external review fell between July 1 and August 3 now have until October 2, 2026 to file. Relevant to plans that elected the HHS process (AL, FL, GA, WI, TX and territories) and self-insured non-federal governmental plans with live claim appeals.

The December 31, 2026 deadline is fast approaching for most non-governmental plan sponsors to amend their tax-qualified retirement plans to comply with changes made by the SECURE Act of 2019, the CARES Act, the Taxpayer Certainty and Disaster Relief Act of 2021, and the Secure 2.0 Act (the “Acts”).

Large slices of public pension portfolios are reported at manager estimates rather than market prices, and the author argues that real valuation and reporting standards are overdue.

From 2008 to 2012, while serving as a Kentucky Retirement Systems trustee, I was not allowed to know the names of the underlying hedge funds inside three hedge fund-of-funds managers.

A new academic report provides unusually strong evidence for a central argument made in both the our investigation of Ohio STRS and our broader CalPERS report: public-pension compensation systems can reward staff for an internally manufactured version of performance that is materially better than the pension’s

The venture capital firm, California’s public pension fund and other investors are reportedly paying $2.8 billion for the asset manager.