BENEFITS DIGEST

A technical correction to the Code of Federal Regulations reinstates the provision stating that a properly paid court-order payment from the Thrift Savings Plan cannot be returned to the plan. The provision was omitted from the January 1, 2026 annual CFR edition. For practitioners handling TSP domestic-relations orders, this restores familiar text rather than announcing a new policy.

The IRS is considering another change to retirement-plan corrections, allowing sponsors to calculate corrective earnings using the Labor Department’s online calculator. That approach remains a request for comment, not an approved method under the new procedure. Brian Anderson’s overview also explains the updated employer-plan correction rules and the separate application process for certain IRA errors. Comments are due January 20, 2027.

Proposed IRS rules published August 11 would clarify how employers test whether dependent care benefits favor higher-paid employees. The change that matters most involves the average-benefits test, which requires that benefits for lower-paid employees average at least 55 percent of those for higher-paid employees. The test would count only employees actually receiving benefits, rather than treating every non-participant as a zero. A plan designed to offer the same benefits to everyone eligible satisfies the same-terms requirement even when use differs by pay level, though the average-benefits test still applies. No more than 25 percent of benefits can go to owners holding more than 5 percent of the business. There’s also a correction path for two of the four tests. A failed average-benefits or owner-concentration test can be fixed after year end by moving the excess into the affected employees’ income by the deadline for furnishing W-2s, and failing any test makes benefits taxable only for highly compensated employees. These programs let workers exclude up to $7,500 a year of dependent care assistance, and employers can rely on the proposed rules before they’re final.

Fisher Phillips' quarter-opening deadline calendar for retirement and health plans, with the firm's warning that a missed date can cost more than paperwork, up to and including a plan's safe harbor status. The detailed calendar ships as an attached guide, a desk reference for the quarter in which many year-end amendment deadlines come due.

Field Assistance Bulletin 2026-01 made late deposits of employee deferrals and loan repayments a DOL enforcement priority, and the agency is mining Form 5500 filings to find them. Small plans must deposit within seven business days of withholding; larger plans must deposit as soon as amounts can reasonably be segregated, typically two to three business days, with the fifteenth business day an emergency outer limit rather than a deadline. Ferenczy recommends written deposit procedures and prompt engagement with the Voluntary Fiduciary Correction Program when deposits slip.

Treasury’s latest guidance answered key compliance questions, advisers say, but employers are now figuring out how to administer the new benefit.

The Northern District of Georgia preliminarily approved a $47.7 million settlement of claims by roughly 189 former NCR executives and their beneficiaries over a top hat plan. Groom's lesson for nonqualified plans: section 409A compliance does not excuse departing from what the plan document promises.

Although the dispute unfolded against the backdrop of Code Section 409A’s plan termination rules, the bottom line for plan sponsors is this: top hat plans are unilateral contracts that employees accept through performance, and once accepted, the express terms of the plan document govern.

CMS’s own announcement of its marketplace verification proposal frames the rule as fraud control. Enrollees would have to clear pre-eligibility verification before advance premium tax credits and income-based cost-sharing reductions are paid, starting with 2028 coverage, with an optional verification window opening August 1, 2027 and an annual confirmation requirement after that. An enrollee who skips verification could be auto-renewed without the assistance rather than losing the insurance itself, and consumers who get no subsidy sit outside the requirement entirely. The employer connection is twofold. The existing ways of verifying whether a worker was offered employer coverage are expressly retained, so sponsors keep their current role in that check, and employees or dependents who lose marketplace assistance under the tighter process may take a fresh look at the group plan at the next enrollment. The rule published in the Federal Register on October 27, and comments are due November 27, 2026.

W.W. Grainger participants have asked the court for preliminary approval of a $2.85 million settlement of claims that the company used retirement-plan forfeitures, the unvested employer contributions left behind when employees depart, to offset its own contributions instead of paying plan expenses. Plaintiffs put the gross recovery at 20% of their $14.25 million loss estimate. Counsel plans to request attorney fees of up to $950,000 and expenses up to $60,000, plus awards of up to $10,000 each for three class representatives. Those amounts and administration expenses would come out of the fund, subject to court approval. Allocation is based on account balances over the class period. The agreement includes no plan amendment and no admission of wrongdoing.

Morgan Stanley’s survey of employers finds the 401(k) treated as a marquee benefit, with about a third of respondents calling it the single most important offering and retirement tying healthcare in top-five mentions. Employers also report leaning on plan design and education to compete for workers. These are employer perceptions rather than a ranking by employees, and the article supplies no sample size.

Employee Fiduciary compares ways employers can divide discretionary profit-sharing contributions among workers. A pro rata formula gives everyone the same percentage of pay; a new-comparability formula can allocate different percentages to employee groups, subject to applicable testing. The guide uses a small-employer example to compare costs and explains contribution limits, vesting and testing. Safe-harbor 401(k) status does not automatically exempt a separate profit-sharing allocation from nondiscrimination requirements.

Gallagher’s research finds employers leaning on automatic enrollment, automatic escalation, and eligibility changes to close a readiness gap, with only 28% of employees saying their current strategy will meet their retirement goals. The employer data come from a 3,717-employer survey, while the employee readiness figure comes from separate polling, so the two numbers should not be chained together.

Kaufman & Canoles’ fall update covers employee stock ownership plan valuations, retirement-plan amendments, written cafeteria-plan terms, educational assistance, and Trump accounts. The firm urges employers to check that their written cafeteria-plan documents match how payroll handles pretax premiums and that educational-assistance documents can accommodate inflation adjustments rather than hard-coding the existing $5,250 limit. It also advises documenting an independent appraisal process when relying on the new ESOP valuation law.

Retirement Learning Center walks through curing a failed ADP test, the test comparing higher-paid employees’ salary deferrals with everyone else’s, by amending the plan into a nonelective safe harbor, an employer contribution paid regardless of whether employees defer anything themselves. Per the article, a calendar-year plan can adopt the 3% version for 2026 by November 30, 2026, while the 4% version remains available into the following year and still covers all of 2026. Eligibility conditions and vesting still matter, other testing requirements may still apply, and sponsors staring at a failed test should price the fix against refunds rather than treat it as an escape hatch.

Ary Rosenbaum’s reminder is simple and regularly ignored. The handbook is not the plan, so eligibility, matching, and benefit descriptions in employee-facing materials have to track the operative plan document and its amendments, because conflicting summaries breed administration mistakes and disputes.

Three participants sued Citizens Financial Group and its plan fiduciaries over the CFG Retirement Savings Plan, which the complaint says held $3.22 billion for 23,881 participants with balances at the end of 2024. The investment claims challenge the retention of Fidelity Freedom Index target-date funds and Vanguard index funds, with the comparisons collected in an [appendix](https://digest.theinnerfirm.com/docs/davis-v-citizens-appendix-2026-10-19.pdf). Separate claims target administrative fees and the use of forfeitures, the employer contributions workers leave behind before vesting, to reduce company contributions rather than participant expenses, plus monitoring and prohibited-transaction theories. The forfeiture-allocation claim is aimed at the discretionary period before a January 2025 plan amendment reprioritized how forfeitures are used. These are allegations in a newly filed complaint, and no class has been certified.

Mayer Brown unpacks a September 18 IRS Employee Plans newsletter correcting the widespread assumption that every SECURE and SECURE 2.0 amendment is due December 31, 2026. Under the newsletter as the firm reads it, discretionary changes a plan has already put into operation generally do need amendments by the end of 2026, while many required amendments come due only after the relevant provision lands on an IRS Required Amendments List, with later dates generally applying to collectively bargained and governmental plans. A separate [Notice 2026-33](https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-26-33.pdf) extends the deadline for optional qualified long-term-care distribution amendments to December 31, 2027. The firm’s practical point is to track the document deadline and the operational compliance date separately.

The Foundation’s answer to the recurring question of when SECURE 2.0 amendments are due is an inventory, not a single date. Amendments on the IRS 2024 Required Amendments List are generally due December 31, 2026, the 2025 list generally runs to December 31, 2027, and certain collectively bargained and governmental plans have until the end of 2028 and 2029. Discretionary changes follow their own timing, and operating in compliance now matters independently of when the plan document catches up.

Scott Danner of Steward Partners writes about financial advisers who sell their practices and keep working through a defined transition. His focus is the adviser’s own succession, identity, client relationships and compensation, with practical advice running to defined duties, pay and transition milestones. It is business-succession commentary from inside the advisory industry rather than guidance on employer plan design.

Judge Gregory B. Williams grants summary judgment to Kraft Heinz in its suit to stop Teamsters Local 355 from arbitrating a grievance over a former Dover plant employee’s eligibility for the company retiree health plan. The collective bargaining agreement’s arbitration clause is broad, but its benefits section commits questions and disputes about benefit programs to the insurance policies and plan documents, and the plan documents supply their own procedures for eligibility disputes. That carve-out takes the grievance outside arbitration, and a permanent injunction will issue.

Thermo Fisher has asked a federal court to dismiss an employee’s suit over its refusal to add a fossil-fuel-free 401(k) option to accommodate his Christian beliefs. In its [October 13 brief](https://digest.theinnerfirm.com/docs/hartley-thermo-fisher-dismissal-brief-2026-10-13.pdf), the company argues that he missed the deadline to file a discrimination charge with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It also argues that the request concerns plan design rather than a conflict between his religion and a job requirement, and that he hasn’t alleged a separate adverse employment action. These are the company’s arguments from its brief. The court hasn’t ruled on them.

The rules an employer thinks its retirement plan follows may not be the rules in the signed document. Ary Rosenbaum urges sponsors to revisit eligibility, employer contributions, vesting, loans and other provisions rather than relying on memory or an old explanation from a provider. A change in personnel or payroll practices can widen the gap between the written terms and day-to-day operation. His recommendation is to read the document with the people administering the plan and resolve discrepancies. Routine familiarity with the provisions makes it easier to identify a problem before it becomes a recurring operational error.

December 31, 2026 is an important retirement plan amendment deadline, but it isn’t the deadline for every change. Segal explains which amendments are due this year, which follow the IRS’s separate timetable for individually designed plans, and which qualify for later deadlines. The year-end date applies to non-governmental single-employer plans, including 403(b) plans not maintained by public schools, while collectively bargained plans have until the end of 2028 and governmental plans until the end of 2029. The date matters most for the long list of discretionary features that trigger amendments only if a plan has adopted them, such as in-service distributions at 59½, emergency savings accounts, Roth treatment of employer contributions, the $7,000 cash-out limit, student loan matching and hardship self-certification. Extra time to amend the paperwork didn’t give plans extra time to follow the law. The amendments must reflect when each provision actually took effect for the plan.

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.

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.

The SECURE Acts raised the statutory required minimum distribution ages to 72 and then 73, but Code section 401(a)(9) sets the latest permissible commencement date, not the plan’s own. A defined benefit plan whose document independently defines its required beginning date as April 1 following age 70 1/2 may keep starting benefits at 70 1/2, a result the preamble to Treasury’s 2024 final RMD regulations confirms directly. The answer lives in the plan document rather than the statute, so check whether yours states its own age or merely incorporates the Code by reference. The amendment clock runs either way; required SECURE amendments, including the technical RMD updates, are generally due by December 31 of this year.

December 31, 2026 is the deadline for most calendar-year retirement plans to document, in a formal amendment, the CARES, SECURE and SECURE 2.0 changes they’ve been operating under, from Roth catch-ups for high earners and long-term part-time eligibility through super catch-ups, higher RMD ages and the optional early-withdrawal provisions. Informal IRS guidance from September 16 suggests some SECURE 2.0 amendment deadlines may slip, but the firm still recommends documenting everything implemented as part of this year-end. The discretionary review is where the litigation lessons show up. The firm suggests forfeiture language that makes the allocation choice a plan-design decision rather than a fiduciary one, claims procedures with limitations and venue provisions, a look at arbitration language, and beneficiary procedures that answer what happens after a divorce or when a beneficiary dies before being paid.

TIAA’s “Retirement in the Age of AI and GLP-1s” survey polled 1,000 adults through KRC Research in late July. On longevity, 53 percent worry more about outliving their savings than about underspending, and 43 percent doubt traditional retirement planning accounts for lives that stretch into the 90s. On what AI will do to their finances, 27 percent expect breakthrough treatments to raise costs, 22 percent expect efficiency to lower them, 20 percent expect little effect, and the rest can’t say. Separately, a third are seriously concerned AI could threaten their earning potential before they retire, a worry that peaks with Generation Z. TIAA’s read is that these are all longevity problems, and its consultants’ advice to employers is to weigh guaranteed lifetime income in plan design on par with fees and the investment menu.

Amro Naddy ran the 360 Reviews division at U.S. News & World Report and says the company owed him roughly $1.9 million under two long-term incentive plans and a 2024 bonus plan when cash ran short. He alleges the CFO offered him a choice between taking less and being fired for cause, and that the termination email arrived two hours later. In a September 28 opinion, Judge Dabney Friedrich let Naddy’s contract and D.C. wage claims on the incentive plans proceed. The 2020 plan was never signed, but under D.C. law continued employment can supply both acceptance and consideration, and clauses making the company’s calculations ‘final’ don’t amount to discretion to pay nothing at all. The severance claim failed because the employee handbook summarizing the severance plan disclaims being a contract and promises only that employees ‘may be eligible’ for severance. The court expressly left open whether claims under the separate severance plan document itself would be preempted by ERISA. The handbook disclaimers did exactly the job they were drafted to do.

Deborah Barbieri worked at Legg Mason for three and a half years at $85 an hour on an offer letter calling her temporary, and received no benefits the whole time. Judge Gardephe’s decision rules on a motion to dismiss that was filed in October 2021 and sat undecided for almost five years. It goes plan by plan, and the temporary label controlled only where each plan’s own text made it decisive. The 401(k) claim survives because “employed on a temporary, as needed, basis” is ambiguous as applied to a multi-year hire. The stock purchase plan claim survives because its exclusions reach part-timers and short-season workers and never mention temps. The vacation and paid-time-off claims survive because nobody identified an exclusion at all. Only the severance claim fails, on language unambiguously excluding “any individual categorized by the Company as a temporary employee.” Employers who rely on worker labels should read this one next to their own plan documents.

The deadline depends on what the amendment does. Most plans adopting optional features under SECURE and SECURE 2.0 must update their documents by December 31, 2026. Required changes follow a different schedule tied to IRS guidance and the agency's annual Required Amendments lists, and later deadlines apply to certain union-negotiated plans, governmental plans, and public school 403(b) plans. These are deadlines for updating plan documents, not permission to delay following rules already in effect. One wrinkle from the IRS's September clarification helps sponsors: if the IRS later issues guidance about an optional feature a plan has already adopted, the further amendment implementing that guidance gets its own, later deadline. The IRS expects to issue final regulations on automatic enrollment, long-term part-time workers, and required minimum distributions, and the Roth catch-up requirement is expected to join the 2027 list, pushing that amendment deadline to December 31, 2029.

Mercer's GRIST covers the December 31, 2026 deadline for adopting SECURE and SECURE 2.0 plan amendments and fills in the rest of the year-end picture, including amendment deadlines under the CARES Act, the Miners Act, and the 2020 disaster-relief law, what the 2024 Required Amendments List already requires, and the routine interest rate and mortality table updates that plans without incorporation-by-reference language must adopt by year end. It covers both individually designed and preapproved plans.

When an employee leaves Verizon before the company's matching contributions vest, the money left behind, called forfeitures, has to go somewhere. Verizon's 401(k) plan gave its benefits committee a choice: use forfeitures to reduce the matching contributions Verizon owed, or use them to pay plan expenses. Year after year the committee chose the first option, at least $21.9 million in 2019 and $31.8 million in 2020, while participants paid plan expenses from their own accounts. Judge Arun Subramanian's September 30 opinion holds that the annual choice was a fiduciary decision, not protected plan design, and that participants plausibly allege the committee put Verizon's interests first. The loyalty, prudence, and oversight claims proceed to discovery; the prohibited-transaction claims are dismissed for good: in the court's reasoning, this internal allocation of forfeitures isn't a transaction with any counterparty at all. The court counted more than 20 district court decisions coming out both ways on these questions, with no appeals court yet to rule. A case schedule, including class certification, is due October 14.

Housing costs, everyday expenses, and debt are making it harder for workers to increase their retirement savings. Goldman Sachs Asset Management's 2026 retirement survey, released Wednesday, finds the share of workers who increased their retirement savings fell to 39 percent from 55 percent a year ago, while the share who cut savings nearly doubled to 14 percent. The pressure points differ by generation, and 61 percent of surveyed workers report working outside their primary job, most of them out of financial need. Only 58 percent of savers call themselves on track, down from 68 percent last year. For sponsors, the survey argues for plan design that treats emergency savings, debt, and retirement as one connected problem rather than competing line items.

The EEOC has sued Scheels All Sports, the employee-owned sporting goods retailer, alleging its employee stock ownership plan discriminated by age. Under the policy the agency describes, employees 40 and over who didn't work 1,000 hours in a year were forced to sell their company shares, while employees under 40 who worked the same reduced hours kept theirs, a design the complaint attributes to stereotypes about which workers are worth retaining. The charging party, a 20-year employee in Reno, was required to divest after turning 40 and ultimately resigned. The suit pleads the Age Discrimination in Employment Act rather than ERISA, a reminder that benefit plan design answers to more than one statute. These are allegations in a complaint the agency filed after conciliation failed, and the company hasn't yet responded. Sponsors with hour-based or age-based distinctions in equity and retirement programs should look at which lines their plans draw and why.

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.

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.

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](https://digest.theinnerfirm.com/docs/kellanova-cert-petition-2026-09-14.pdf) and [FedEx's companion petition](https://digest.theinnerfirm.com/docs/fedex-v-watt-cert-petition-2026-09-14.pdf), 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.

For most plans, amendments documenting optional SECURE and SECURE 2.0 changes already in operation are due December 31, 2026. Required amendments wait until the end of the second year after they appear on an IRS Required Amendments List, which for the Roth catch-up mandate is expected to mean December 31, 2029, per Haynes Boone's read of the September 16 bulletin. Bricker Graydon's Lyndsey Barnett adds the question sponsors skip: whether the person signing the amendment actually has authority to adopt it. If the board never delegated amendment authority, board action is required, and auditors ask for the resolutions, not just the amendment. One caution: a later amendment deadline doesn't postpone the requirement to operate the plan correctly in the meantime.

CFA Institute's modeling found that private equity and venture capital offered the strongest potential to grow retirement balances. Private debt, infrastructure, and real estate produced lower average returns and played a more defensive role. Changing how a target-date fund adjusts its investments during the final decade before retirement affected outcomes more than the private-market allocation itself. The findings suggest that choosing how these investments fit into a fund matters more than simply making them available.

The question plan sponsors have been asking, answered from the source. Discretionary SECURE and SECURE 2.0 amendments, the features a plan chose to adopt, must be adopted by December 31, 2026, the Notice 2024-2 deadline, now about three and a half months away. Required amendments run on a different clock: generally the end of the second calendar year after the provision lands on the IRS's annual Required Amendments List. Collectively bargained plans, governmental plans and public-school 403(b) plans get later dates. The article also previews what will land on future Required Amendments Lists, including final rules on automatic enrollment, long-term part-time employees and required minimum distributions, each carrying its own two-year amendment window. The task between now and year-end is sorting every adopted feature into the right column.

Siobhan Haldeman's lawyer asked Mass General Brigham for the plan documents governing her long-term disability claim on September 18, 2024, and received them 230 days later, after this lawsuit was filed. Judge Burroughs ordered MGB to pay a $5,000 penalty under ERISA's document-request provision, which now authorizes up to $110 a day, describing the award as a middle route between precedents. MGB's defense was that Haldeman's counsel already had the documents from representing other participants. The court's answer: “MGB never told Haldeman's counsel that she already possessed the Plan Documents; to the contrary, it repeatedly promised to promptly deliver the Plan Documents, then failed to do so.” Being deprived of plan terms while preparing an appeal is inherently prejudicial, the court held. Haldeman is entitled to attorney fees, with the amount to be set after a fee motion due in fourteen days. The plan itself escaped liability on an important distinction: the penalty applies to the administrator, not the plan. [Roberts Disability Law's same-day commentary](https://robertsdisability.com/what-happens-when-an-erisa-plan-administrator-ignores-your-request-for-documents) reads the case from the claimant side.

Proposed regulations issued in August spell out how employers can make tax-free contributions to employees' Trump Accounts, beginning with a separate written plan document. Warner Norcross walks through the ground rules. Contributions are capped at $2,500 per employee per year no matter how many children an employee has, the cap counts both direct employer dollars and cafeteria-plan elections, and amounts get reported on the W-2. Employers cannot steer workers to a preferred custodian, so contributions may flow to many institutions, and the Labor Department has said these plans generally sit outside ERISA because the benefits belong to the children rather than the employees. A public hearing is set for October 15, and employers may rely on the proposal immediately.

A former Husch Blackwell partner claimed the firm violated ERISA by holding back money from his pay all year for the plan's year-end profit-sharing contribution and depositing it months later, past the deadline that applies to employee deferrals. Last Wednesday the court granted summary judgment for the firm and dismissed the case, with reasoning that matters to any partnership. The holdbacks fund an employer contribution, and employer contributions become plan assets only when they are deposited, so the strict deposit-timing rules for participant contributions never applied. What a pay stub calls the money does not change what the plan documents say it is, and partners drawing firm income are not employees earning wages.

Two sets of proposed regulations address how employer-sponsored Trump Account contribution programs will operate and how account assets may be invested before a beneficiary turns 18. Seyfarth walks through the requirements, including a separate written plan document, a $2,500 per-employee cap on tax-favored Section 128 contributions, cafeteria plan elections for employee pre-tax contributions to dependents' accounts, and nondiscrimination testing that tracks the dependent care FSA rules. Contributions default to an S&P 500 index ETF with ESG index funds off the table, and open questions remain, from tracking eligible dependents to coordinating contributions across a controlled group.

The quarterly survey tracks health plan design challenges after Barbich v. Northwestern, the forfeiture line following the Eighth Circuit's standing dismissal in Matula, actuarial-equivalence rulings in the Sixth and Eleventh Circuits, and the Supreme Court's withdrawal-liability decision in M&K Employee Solutions, with the Fifth Circuit's en banc surcharge case and Anderson v. Intel on the watch list.

Plan sponsors of qualified defined contribution plans such as 401(k) plans must update their pre-approved plans every six years to reflect law changes and to maintain their pre-approved status with the IRS. Boutwell Fay walks through what the fourth remedial amendment cycle requires and the timing sponsors should be planning around.

The August Monthly Minute reminds plan sponsors of the upcoming SECURE 2.0 plan amendment deadline and highlights a Fourth Circuit decision reflecting the litigation impact of a delayed ERISA appeal determination.

The 2026 regulations standardize claim communications, restructure open negotiation, clarify batching rules, and impose tighter deadlines for determining IDR eligibility. Self-funded plans must register.

The city reduced the employment tenure requirement under its Paid Parental Leave Ordinance from 180 days to 90 days, meaning eligible employees can start accessing employer-paid supplemental compensation benefits faster.

Foley's reminder that years of CARES, SECURE, and SECURE 2.0 operation may not yet be reflected in plan documents: when operations, communications, and the document diverge, the amendment deadline is the cleanup moment. A practical December 31 checklist starter.

Plan sponsors seeking IRS sign-off on individual plan questions get a simpler road: new Form 15662 standardizes private letter ruling requests, pay.gov filing opens August 26, and paper submissions end September 4. Worth knowing before your next plan design question needs a ruling.

a payroll and policy update for any employer with San Francisco headcount.

Treasury and the IRS proposed the framework for employer Trump account contribution programs: a separate written plan, eligibility classes tested under DCAP-style nondiscrimination rules including a 90% sliding-scale safe harbor, written employee notification, and W-2 reporting, with employees able to exclude up to $2,500 per year of employer contributions. The proposal also updates the section 129 DCAP nondiscrimination rules themselves, reflecting the OBBBA's increase of the dependent care exclusion to $7,500. Employers may rely on the proposed rules now; comments are due September 25 and a public hearing is set for October 15.

Thompson Hine tracks the spread of the “financial dominance” theory introduced in Barbich v. Northwestern University, in which participants challenge employer health plan design choices under ERISA, and surveys how the claims are expanding in 2026.

Though the plan document appeared to require arbitration in pursuing recovery in a fiduciary breach suit, a federal appellate court has affirmed a district court decision rebuffing that requirement.

In a recent survey, half of plan sponsors said they seek ‘minor’ or ‘moderate’ plan design updates to improve their plan’s impact upon participants.

Changes in plan design, coupled with regulatory improvements and market evolution, mean concerns about collective investment trusts should no longer keep them from 403(b) plans.

The DOL recently issued proposed regulations under ERISA that create additional safe harbors for distributing group health plan documents electronically.

As the SECURE 2.0 Act deadline for mandatory catch-up contributions for some plan participants looms, many retirement plan sponsors are beginning to amend their plan documents to meet its requirements.

VAPPs can help funded pension plans balance risk, support retirement income and create a more sustainable path forward.

In Raya v. Barka, No. 25-2394, __ F.4th __, 2026 WL 2168772 (9th Cir. July 28, 2026), Plaintiff sued his former employer, Calbiotech, Inc., several individual defendants, and Calbiotech’s 401(k) Profit Sharing Plan and Pension Plan, asserting ERISA claims for denial of benefits, breach of fiduciary duty.

Why force someone hired on Tuesday to sit around until the first of the next month or next quarter before they can defer into the 401(k) plan? Immediate access feels employee-friendly, modern, and flexible.

Trump Accounts launched on July 4, 2026. These special individual retirement accounts (IRAs) can help children under 18 build savings.

Once upon a time, 401(k) eligibility was easy. Age 21. One year of service. Quarterly entry dates. Everyone understood the assignment

“Plan document providers have a little over a year to get their pre-approved defined benefit plans updated for these changes and submitted to the IRS. Stay tuned for ‘LRM’ sample language to help

Many retirement plans must be amended by December 31, 2026 to bring the plan document into compliance with a number of legislative changes. To ensure your plan document accurately reflects your

I’ve always liked immediate eligibility for deferrals. Clean, simple, easy to explain. Let people in the door and let them start saving. Where things go sideways is when a provider layers on a safe

The countdown clock is running. The stadium lights are on, and the clock is ticking toward extra time. Plan sponsors must amend many qualified retirement plans by December 31, 2026. Just like in a

Salek-Raham said, “I think after these cases came out, a lot of employers took a good look at their forfeiture language and their plan documents,” noting that courts are increasingly focused on plan

Three Hard Rock employees say the company’s health plan charged tobacco users $15 a week, $780 over a full year, without offering the full reward for completing a cessation program and without adequate notice that a doctor’s recommendation could substitute, allegations in the same mold as the surcharge suits against other large employers. Free access to a quit program alone doesn’t satisfy the wellness rules, the October 23 complaint argues. Four counts split between the surcharge’s design and the plan’s fiduciaries, seeking relief for a proposed class reaching back six years. How the plan is funded and which plan document governs are expressly unknown to the plaintiffs at this stage, no percentage-cap violation is claimed, and the allegations have not been decided.

HHS will retain its 2025 civil monetary penalty amounts for 2026. Last fall’s federal funding lapse prevented the Bureau of Labor Statistics from producing the October inflation figure needed for the annual adjustment. The Office of Management and Budget consequently cancelled the 2026 adjustment in April. HHS’s notice confirms that existing penalties remain enforceable at their 2025 levels.

CMS and the Labor Department announced that five employers (Amazon, Axon, Google, Meta, and Oracle) signed a statement of support for bringing electronic prior authorization to the self-funded health plans they sponsor, building on the 2025 pledge by major insurers. The commitment is voluntary, not a new mandate on self-funded plans, and the aim is to replace fax-and-phone authorization workflows with electronic exchanges regardless of how a patient’s coverage is funded. A separate CMS rule already requires certain payers to implement electronic prior authorization beginning January 1, 2027, and the employer statement extends the push into the self-funded market.

Foley & Lardner’s explainer covers the employer-contribution side of the new accounts, up to $2,500 per employee per year, fundable by employer dollars or pre-tax salary reductions for dependents through a cafeteria plan. An employer offering contributions needs a separate written program plus nondiscrimination, notification, reporting, and trustee-notice compliance, and salary-reduction designs require plan amendments. Parts of the framework rest on proposed regulations, so not every mechanic is final.

Treasury asked OMB to renew its approval of Form 15397, the application a filer uses to request more time to furnish recipient statements such as Forms 1099. The notice is an extension of an existing information collection without change, meant to standardize requests that once arrived by letter. It grants no one an extension by itself, and comments on the renewal are due November 19.

Baylor Scott & White Health is the latest employer to face a tobacco-surcharge class action. In a complaint filed October 12 in the Northern District of Texas, an employee says the health system’s self-funded medical plan charges tobacco users $30 per person each pay period, up to $60, roughly $780 a year for employee-only coverage. She alleges that the plan’s cessation program, surcharge refunds and disclosures don’t meet the requirements for a lawful tobacco surcharge. The plan’s participant materials say the surcharge applies until an employee completes cessation coaching and submits an affidavit, with no promised refund of amounts already collected, and the complaint says the 174-page summary plan description never mentions the surcharge at all. The suit also adds fiduciary-breach and prohibited-transaction claims over the handling of the withheld dollars, which the plan’s own documents route to a welfare trust. The plan had more than 49,000 active participants at the end of 2024. These are allegations, not findings.

Roberts Disability walks through Krambeck v. Unum, a September 30 Florida federal ruling that sends a long COVID disability claim to a bench trial and strips the insurer of two advantages it usually counts on. The policy’s discretionary clause did not require the judge to give the insurer’s decision the benefit of the doubt, because a 2020 restatement reset the policy’s effective date and placed it under Washington state’s prohibition on such clauses. And Unum’s counterclaim to recover $24,000 in benefits after the claimant received a retroactive Social Security award failed, because the money had been spent, leaving no identifiable funds for Unum to recover through that claim. The court also refused to weigh dueling physician opinions on paper, holding that a genuine dispute over how long the claimant can speak in a day belongs at trial. Plan documents age, state insurance regulation moves, and a routine restatement can quietly change which rules govern.

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.

A warehouse associate who represented himself largely lost his benefits case against Amazon after a bench trial before Judge Drew Tipton over the company’s Texas occupational injury benefit plan, but won two rulings that other employers should notice. First, the plan’s one-year limitations period, though reasonable under Heimeshoff, was unenforceable for all three injury claims; two appeal denials never disclosed the period, and the third stated the period but omitted the calendar date it expired, which the disability claims regulation has separately required since April 2018. The court noted no circuit has decided the calendar-date question and declined to enforce the deadline anyway. Second, Amazon owes a $6,050 statutory penalty for furnishing the plan document as an email attachment the claimant credibly testified he could not open; emailing a document is not delivery reasonably calculated to ensure actual receipt unless the electronic disclosure safe harbor is actually satisfied, and nobody followed up. Claims teams should pull a sample denial letter this week and check for a concrete expiration date, and make sure requested plan documents actually reach the employee.

In its June 17 decision in Justman v. Accenture, now drawing commentary, the Third Circuit held that a denial of benefits claim under ERISA section 502(a)(1)(B) must be brought against the entity obligated to pay benefits or the one that controls the benefit determination, not merely the employer designated as plan administrator. Prudential denied the accidental death claim and later settled; Accenture, which retained administrative duties but no authority over claims decisions, was dismissed, and a separate fiduciary claim failed because the complaint did not adequately allege a missed disclosure deadline or resulting harm. For sponsors the decision is a reason to make sure plan documents and summary plan descriptions say plainly who decides claims, and that practice matches the paper. Clean allocation of authority is what got Accenture out.

The order list issued Monday, October 5, on the opening day of the term, denied review in four cases benefits lawyers were watching. Zavislak v. Netflix leaves standing a Ninth Circuit ruling that the service contracts between Netflix’s health plan and its administrators aren’t plan documents a participant can demand under ERISA’s disclosure rules. McLean v. Delta Air Lines ends former pilots’ effort to revive a suit claiming Delta pushed them out over military leave, leaving the Eleventh Circuit’s dismissal in place. Gasper v. EIDP closes a retiree’s challenge to a reduction of his monthly annuity, with Justice Alito recused. And in United Airlines v. Kincannon, the Court declined to review the class certification United challenged in a suit by employees placed on unpaid leave after receiving religious exemptions from its COVID-19 vaccine policy, over a noted vote by Justice Kavanaugh to grant review. The case traveled below as Sambrano v. United Airlines, where the panel affirmed certification of a 2,221-member class over a partial concurrence by Judge Willett questioning whether religious sincerity can ever be a common question. A denial isn’t a ruling on the merits. It leaves each lower court decision in place without endorsing its reasoning.

A plain-English rundown of the employer side of the Treasury and IRS proposals. Employers could contribute up to $2,500 a year tax free with respect to each employee, a single cap that covers contributions to the employee's own account and to dependents' accounts combined, and the money counts toward an account's $5,000 annual contribution limit. The proposed regulations add the mechanics, including a separate written plan document, certification procedures on the beneficiary's age and dependent status, employee notices and annual statements, and data sharing with the account trustee, and eligibility can't favor highly compensated employees or their dependents. These remain proposed rules, so the details can change before they're final.

The IRS is clearing out old guidance. Notice 2026-58 declares 71 revenue rulings, revenue procedures, notices, and announcements obsolete under the administration's deregulatory executive orders, the third round in the effort after earlier notices covering 9 and 83 documents. Nothing here repeals a current benefit protection. The listed items are expired or superseded, including Notice 96-8, the 1996 guidance on calculating lump sum distributions from cash balance plans, which Congress superseded in the Pension Protection Act of 2006, and financial-crisis-era funding relief for multiemployer pension plans whose election windows closed years ago. Sponsors with plan documents or procedures that still cite any listed item should confirm what replaced it.

The comment period closed September 21 on the proposal to let group health plans deliver required notices electronically. As Hall Benefits Law explains, the optional safe harbor works by posting documents online and notifying participants where to find them, by email or through a web portal, mirroring what retirement plans have had since 2020, and anyone who prefers paper can opt out and receive paper copies. It would cover summary plan descriptions, summaries of benefits and coverage, COBRA notices, and HIPAA special-enrollment notices, among others. The website, which can be a mobile app, must keep documents up at least a year, be searchable, and let users print or save. One caution from [Marsh's alert](https://www.mercer.com/en-us/insights/us-health-news/dol-proposed-rule-would-ease-e-delivery-by-erisa-group-health-plans/) for sponsors planning ahead. A wrap document, a single document combining several benefit programs, may not fully qualify, because the safe harbor covers group health plan disclosures only.

October 1 is the deadline for a new calendar-year safe harbor 401(k) with a matching formula, because the plan must be in place for at least three months of the plan year. Porter's point is that "in place" means executed documents, provider onboarding, payroll integration, and participant notices delivered roughly 30 days ahead, so the practical decision date falls well before the deadline. Employers aiming to use this matching safe harbor design for the current year need to act before October 1. Other designs run on different clocks; an employer with an existing 401(k) can generally add a 3 percent nonelective safe harbor as late as 30 days before the plan year ends.

Hughes elected accidental death and dismemberment (AD&D) coverage at ten times salary, an $830,000 benefit. When his wife died in an accident, the plan paid $415,000, because the chart in the plan's benefits summary, the SPD, caps spousal coverage at 50 percent. He sued, alleging the limit was buried in "non-obvious hyperlinks" and that a Truist benefits manager conceded it was not easy to find. In Hughes v. Truist Bank, the court dismissed everything. The chart is unambiguous, and designing the portal is an administrative task that doesn't involve exercising fiduciary judgment. "If internet portal design were to become fodder for claims of breach of fiduciary duty, it would risk expanding fiduciary duties well beyond the text of ERISA." Federal benefits law also barred his state-law misrepresentation claims.

Comments closed September 21 on DOL's proposed electronic-disclosure option for group health plans. Under the proposal, plans could email a notice that documents are available online, but couldn't use that option to email the documents themselves because they may contain sensitive health information. Participants could request unlimited free paper copies. A single summary plan description covering medical, life, and disability benefits presents a complication. The new option would cover the medical benefits, while life and disability benefits would remain subject to the existing delivery rules, which allow workplace computer access or the recipient's agreement to electronic delivery. DOL requested comments on how to address the gap.

Bass Berry focuses on where the relief runs out. The FAQs bless prospective-only rewards and confirm that a passing reference to a wellness program in a benefits summary does not trigger the full disclosure obligation, but the forbearance binds only the agencies. Disclosure failures, fiduciary breaches, and plan design defects remain open theories for private plaintiffs.

Chief Judge Jarbou dismissed every claim in the amended complaint. The headline holding voided the Labor Department's physician accommodation disclosure regulation as applied—because the rules themselves treat a tobacco cessation program as requiring no health related accommodation, requiring Meijer to notify participants of an accommodation it need not offer was an unreasonable reading of the statute after Loper Bright. The opinion also rejected the theory that using surcharge collections to offset employer contributions breaches fiduciary duties—the duty is to deliver promised benefits, not to maximize plan assets, and higher premiums may injure employees without injuring the plan. The prohibited transaction claim fell to the Sixth Circuit's Holliday rule that an employer may do by discretion what it could have done by plan amendment.

A vendor guide, but a usefully concrete one. The conversion timeline runs 60 to 120 days, termination notices to the incumbent often require 90 days, and the blackout notice must go out 30 to 60 days before participants lose access, with penalties of up to $173 per day per participant for missing the deadline. The guide walks through what a mid-year switch splits between two providers, why January 1 conversions run cleaner, and which charges hide in investment expense ratios rather than invoices, and it reminds sponsors that the blackout notice duty stays with the employer no matter who prepares the paperwork.

One of the biggest misconceptions among plan sponsors is that providing required notices and disclosures means employees understand their retirement plan.

Experts from Groom Law Group and CAPTRUST answer a practical question on the timing of 403(b) restatements and SECURE 2.0 amendments.

Treasury and the IRS announce their intent to propose regulations implementing the Saver's Match program under section 6433, the SECURE 2.0 provision paying federal matching contributions of up to $1,000 directly into the retirement accounts of eligible low- and moderate-income savers for tax years beginning after December 31, 2026. The notice requests comments by October 5, 2026 on eligibility, claiming and payment mechanics, financial-institution reporting, and treatment of erroneous payments.

Employers would have a clearer path to delivering summary plan descriptions (SPDs) and other required health plan documents electronically to participants who have provided—or been assigned—an electronic address under a proposed “notice and access” regulation from the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Employee Benefits

a change DOL estimates could lift e-delivery rates from about 68% to 90% and save $402 million a year.

The deadline to adopt a restated pre-approved 403(b) plan is rapidly approaching. Here's what employers need to know.

If your organization sponsors a pre-approved 403(b) plan, an important compliance deadline looms on the horizon.

The court denied Defendant Metropolitan Life Insurance Company’s motion.

Fred Barstein forecasts where defined contribution plans go next, drawing on what plan sponsors say at the training sessions his organization runs. The priorities are nuts and bolts, administration that works, data that moves cleanly between providers, and collaboration among advisers, recordkeepers and payroll, with the conflicts that collaboration creates getting a hard look. The changes he describes are forecasts, and their pace depends on employers actually demanding them.

Joshua Dietch draws on a study of nearly 600 advisers to describe how recordkeepers actually get hired and fired. Price drives selection for 80% and service for 68%, but the walk-away numbers reverse the story, with 28% citing service failures as the reason they stop doing business with a provider against 8% citing fees. Needs differ across specialist, hybrid and wealth-focused practices, so the useful comparison for a plan committee is against advisers serving plans like theirs.

Alliant’s compliance alert covers the transparency-in-coverage final rule’s changes to machine-readable files, executive attestations and the cost-sharing information plans must make available by telephone. For self-funded plans, the practical work is confirming vendor readiness and pinning down who is contractually responsible for each file and attestation.

Correcting a plan error and deciding who pays for it are two different problems. Ary Rosenbaum advises sponsors to preserve payroll records, implementation instructions and service agreements. A fiduciary-service label doesn’t tell you which tasks a provider actually took on, so the service agreement is what settles who owed what. The piece is a practical reminder that the recordkeeping fight after an error often matters as much as the fix.

Aon’s compliance bulletin explains the October 6 final rules updating health plans’ machine-readable price files. For employers, a central change is the requirement to certify that the posted files are accurate. Other changes include one in-network file per provider network, aggregated allowed-amounts reporting, and quarterly rather than monthly posting. A plan can delegate the files and the attestation to a third-party administrator by written agreement, but the bulletin’s caution is that a self-insured plan may still answer for the vendor’s noncompliance. The bulletin puts the member-facing tool changes at plan years beginning January 1, 2027, the first quarterly machine-readable files at April 1, 2027, and annual utilization files at July 1, 2028.

Milliman and Marsh project that the 2027 employee deferral limit will rise to $25,500, with corresponding increases expected for catch-up limits and other inflation-adjusted thresholds, including a projected $37,250 total for workers aged 60 through 63, the $25,500 plus an $11,750 enhanced catch-up. Despite the headline, these are planning estimates, and nothing is official until the IRS announcement, which usually lands in late October or early November. Recordkeepers and payroll teams can pencil the numbers in; communications should wait for the agency.

Ary Rosenbaum recommends a standing yearly meeting devoted to how the retirement plan is actually operating, with an agenda spanning service providers, participant concerns, errors, cybersecurity, plan design, and who is responsible for what, memorialized in written minutes. ERISA does not require an annual meeting, and he does not claim otherwise. The minutes are the quiet payoff, since they preserve the reasons for decisions that get questioned years later.

A Corporate Synergies account-management director distinguishes posting benefits information from walking an employee through a formulary fight, a claims dispute, or a cost-sharing surprise, and argues the hands-on version is what actually reduces confusion and lost work time. The piece is vendor commentary without measured results, but the distinction it draws is a fair test to put to any advocacy service a sponsor is paying for.

PLANADVISER returns to Kelly v. Altria, the Fourth Circuit’s August 10 [ruling](https://digest.theinnerfirm.com/docs/kelly-v-altria-ca4-opinion-2026-08-10.pdf) that a recordkeeper’s administrative services agreement can be a plan document subject to ERISA’s plan-document disclosure rules when it sets out operational duties such as participant calls, balances and investment information. Practitioners from Haynes Boone and the Wagner Law Group discuss the administrative fallout, including how sponsors should reread service agreements with disclosure requests in mind. The question of what document a participant can demand turns on the document’s function in running the plan, not its label.

Marcia Wagner and Ari Sonneberg describe how bundled recordkeeping, advice, investment management and plan-administration services have blurred the lines among provider roles. Fiduciary status follows the function actually performed and the authority actually held, not the label on the contract. The firm urges sponsors to map which entity does what, how it and its affiliates are paid, and whether the contract matches operations, because hiring a provider never transfers the duty to monitor it.

PLANSPONSOR reports on the Fourth Circuit’s ruling in Richard Kelly’s suit against Altria, which held that a recordkeeper’s administrative services agreement can be a plan document subject to ERISA’s plan-document disclosure rules when it sets out operational duties such as participant calls, balances and investment information. The [opinion](https://digest.theinnerfirm.com/docs/kelly-v-altria-ca4-opinion-2026-08-10.pdf), decided August 10, remands on the penalty question. Practitioners interviewed suggest sponsors reread their service agreements with disclosure requests in mind.

A closed Washington aircraft-services business left employees with retirement accounts they couldn’t access. PLANSPONSOR reports that a federal court [appointed](https://digest.theinnerfirm.com/docs/dol-v-commercial-aircraft-interiors-order-2026-09-29.pdf) AMI Benefit Plan Administrators Inc. as independent fiduciary for Commercial Aircraft Interiors’ abandoned 401(k) plan after the Labor Department sued. DOL’s [complaint](https://digest.theinnerfirm.com/docs/dol-v-commercial-aircraft-interiors-complaint.pdf) identified 59 participants and about $260,000 in plan assets as of January 8, 2026, and said the remaining company representative lacked authority to complete the necessary work. The September 29 default judgment authorizes the independent fiduciary to administer and distribute the remaining assets and terminate the plan.

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.

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.

A retirement plan can run smoothly and still fall short for the workforce it serves, writes T. Katuri Kaye. In her example, 90 percent participation looks strong until you ask whether first-year employees are in, whether lower-paid workers contribute enough to collect the full match, and whether anyone ever moves off the auto-enrollment default rate. The four steps use data employers already receive from recordkeepers and payroll. She closes on governance. Choosing the matching formula is a business decision about plan design, while investigating why employees miss the match is fiduciary work governed by ERISA, and committee minutes should make clear which kind of decision was being made.

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.

Very few 401(k) fee cases reach trial. After a six-day bench trial, Judge William Young [found breaches](https://digest.theinnerfirm.com/docs/stephan-v-trader-joes-ffcl-2026-09-28.pdf) 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 $5,000 answer. In Haldeman v. Mass General Brigham, No. 25-cv-10331-ADB (D. Mass. Sept. 14, 2026), the court imposed a statutory penalty for a 230-day delay in producing plan documents a participant requested, and awarded fees. The plan administrator is the only proper defendant under the statute. The participant didn't have to prove deliberate misconduct or that the delay harmed him. And the $110 a day figure is a ceiling within the court's discretion, not an entitlement. The practical protection is a process for identifying and supplying requested plan documents on time.

A clean field guide to the court orders that divide retirement benefits in divorce, read against the Labor Department's own guidance.

A practitioner's read on SURCH, the newly launched States' Unclaimed Retirement Clearing House, framed for the fiduciaries who live with the problem. The clearinghouse gives sponsors and recordkeepers a single portal for voluntarily transferring certain unclaimed retirement distributions to participating state unclaimed property programs, with dozens of states and the District of Columbia on board so far, in place of separate state-by-state processes. The logic is comparative advantage, since state unclaimed property offices have decades of experience reuniting owners with abandoned assets, searchable databases included. The warning is equally plain. This is not a free pass to stop searching, and prudent search procedures and documentation remain the fiduciary's job.

An opinion piece examines how frequent job changes expose participants to what the author calls plan churn, the accumulation of small accounts, cash-outs, and lost momentum that follows each move between employer plans, and argues the problem deserves more attention from plan sponsors and recordkeepers than it gets.

Sixty-one percent of participants on Vanguard's recordkeeping platform held a single target-date fund in 2025, up from 46 percent in 2016, and 66 percent held just one fund of any kind. Vanguard credits automatic enrollment, which nearly 80 percent of large plans now use, and target-date defaults for the simplification.

The kitchenware retailer is funneling $10 million toward the retirement accounts of workers who helped it navigate tariffs while also reimbursing vendors for discounts.

The American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries designation is designed for plan administrators, recordkeepers and advisers.

An Illinois veterinary clinic agreed to pay $500,000 to settle a proposed class action claiming it invested nearly all of its employees' retirement savings in pharmaceutical and biotech stocks. The theory here is concentration, not fees (an unusual entry in a year dominated by recordkeeping-fee and forfeiture claims), and a reminder that a small plan with an idiosyncratic lineup carries a different risk profile than a large plan with an ordinary one.

Behavioral biases reduce income product usage that otherwise could help participants during the decumulation stage. However, there are steps recordkeepers and sponsors can take to account for those biases, according to a new report.

Hall Benefits Law reads Kelly v. Altria for plan administrators: the Fourth Circuit's holding that a recordkeeping services agreement is a disclosable plan document raises the stakes on participant document requests, and on what your service agreements actually say.

ARA's plain-language walk-through of Kelly v. Altria: a participant who wanted to liquidate his 401(k) to catch a market uptick, sued when the transfers moved too slowly, and mostly lost on appeal. The practical moral for recordkeepers and plan committees.

Kantor & Kantor's litigation desk reads Kelly v. Altria from the participant side: the Fourth Circuit's holding that a recordkeeping services agreement is a plan document expands what administrators must produce on request, and what statutory penalties attach when they don't.

A second read on the SECURE 2.0 section 324 rollover package, with attention to the four sample forms and what recordkeepers will need to change to support direct electronic transfers.

and why plan sponsors should treat cross-selling as a fiduciary-oversight item.

Roberts Disability walks through both halves of Kelly v. Altria: the participant's benefits and fiduciary claims failed, but the administrative services agreement between a plan and its recordkeeper is a plan document ERISA requires administrators to produce on request.

Experts say participants, recordkeepers and plan sponsors share responsibilities in making participants whole after experiencing a loss.

A closer read of the Bessemer FCU filing against TruStage shows the complaint specifically alleges some credit unions temporarily lost employee access to 401(k) and other retirement accounts when TruStage shut its network down after the July 15 breach. A concrete look at how a recordkeeping vendor's outage becomes a retirement-plan access problem for plan sponsors.

F.4th —-, 2026 WL 2084784 (7th Cir. July 20, 2026), a suit for ERISA benefits, the Seventh Circuit affirmed summary judgment for the University of Chicago, its two Section 403(b) retirement plans, and TIAA, the plans’ recordkeeper, holding that a power of attorney lacking express authority to waive spousal annuity rights could not effect the change.

Plan sponsors often approach vendor searches with the best intentions and the wrong priorities. The most common mistake is treating the process like a shopping exercise instead of a fiduciary decision.

A Cerulli report found that 71% of recordkeepers call the pooled employer plans a major or moderate business priority.

More recordkeepers are seeing pooled employer plans as a tool for future business growth

Everyone in the retirement plan business loves talking about technology. Recordkeepers spend millions promoting participant websites, mobile apps, artificial intelligence tools, and payroll

Ary Rosenbaum opens with the Terminator and lands on a practical point. He expects artificial intelligence to compress fees and margins in plan administration, which would let providers who use it well do more for less while the ones who don’t lose business to the ones who do. He wants human review of anything the tools produce, controls on what client data goes into them, and attention to the conflicts that come with the efficiency.

A projected investment return may soon appear in more adviser and manager presentations. The SEC’s October 15 [approval order](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-2026-10-20/html/2026-21393.htm) permits FINRA members to use projections and targeted returns with audiences assessed for their financial expertise, resources and the relevance of the information. It doesn’t authorize indiscriminate retail marketing. Firms must disclose assumptions and risks and retain supporting records. A plan committee receiving such a pitch should be able to see what assumptions produce the attractive number. FINRA still needs to set the implementation date.

A more generous maximum match can still fail the rules for an automatic-enrollment safe-harbor plan. NAPA’s example tests the formula at every employee contribution level, not just at the top. An enhanced formula must provide at least the basic match of 100% on the first 1% of pay and 50% on the next 5%. Its matching rate cannot increase as employees contribute more, and highly compensated employees cannot get a higher matching rate than other employees. Sponsors changing the formula need to check the full schedule before relying on the safe harbor.

NAPA reports a practitioner panel with Jordan Cross, Amanda Iverson, and Joey Santos Jones. The panelists describe artificial intelligence already at work in preparing employee data for plan administration, drafting participant communications, and building training materials, and they map where human judgment still has to do the work. Their cautions are confidentiality, unreliable answers, and the slow loss of the skills needed to check a tool’s output, so they recommend written policies and human review. It is practitioner conversation rather than regulatory guidance, and delegation to a tool does not delegate the fiduciary duty.

K&L Gates reviews OSHA’s new guidance on workplace opioid-overdose response, covering naloxone availability, training, and response planning as informational guidance rather than a new standard. The guidance does not impose a new requirement that every employer stock overdose-reversal medication. The practical move is a response plan matched to worksite risk.

The Mercer CFA Institute Global Pension Index compares the adequacy, sustainability, and integrity of 55 retirement systems and finds aging populations pressing on nearly all of them. The United States earns a C+ and ranks 33rd. The rankings and the reform recommendations belong to the index’s authors, and the methodology rewards particular design choices, so the grade is a conversation starter about coverage and sustainability rather than a verdict on any one plan.

This interview with Basic Capital’s chief executive describes an optional brokerage-window investment that uses financing to give a participant more market exposure than the account balance alone would buy, with the participant paying the financing back over time and, in the company’s telling, no personal guarantee and no margin call. The interview presents the company’s account of the product rather than an independent assessment of its costs and risks. Plan fiduciaries should examine the financing terms and oversight obligations before treating access through a brokerage window as a reason to stop asking questions.

Leaders of the American Retirement Association and ASPPA told their annual meeting they expect the next Congress to take a serious run at broad retirement-coverage legislation, describing bipartisan interest alongside concern that any mandate preserve the plans employers already sponsor. The predictions are tied to election outcomes nobody knows yet, so this is a forecast from advocates with a stake, useful mainly as a signal of where the trade groups will spend their lobbying effort.

Advisers quoted here treat the Social Security cost-of-living announcement as an opening for retirement-income conversations rather than news that changes anyone’s plan. Fidelity models what a hypothetical future benefit reduction would mean for savings targets, and CAPTRUST connects the moment to participant education. The hypothetical is only a hypothetical, since no benefit cut is enacted or scheduled, and sponsors fielding participant questions can use the same distinction.

Lockton relays what employer roundtables are worrying about, which is cost pressure meeting a workforce that understands its benefits better than it used to, and expects communication, flexibility, and visible value in return. The anecdotes about leave usage and performance are illustrations rather than evidence, and the piece is a broker’s view of its clients.

Lasher works through the familiar two-hats problem. An employer acts as a fiduciary when it exercises discretion over plan administration or control over plan assets, and as a settlor, making ordinary business decisions rather than fiduciary ones, when it designs, amends or terminates a plan. The practical point is that titles settle nothing. The analysis runs function by function, so contracts, communications and actual responsibilities need to line up with the hat the employer thinks it is wearing.

Social Security benefits increase 3.6% for 2027, and the maximum wages subject to Social Security tax rise from $184,500 to $192,300. The tax rate remains 6.2% each for employees and employers. Higher retirement benefits begin in January; increased Supplemental Security Income payments arrive December 31, 2026. SSA’s [2027 fact sheet](https://www.ssa.gov/news/en/cola/factsheets/2027.html) also updates the earnings limits for people receiving benefits before full retirement age. Payroll and retirement-education materials need to distinguish these changes from retirement-plan contribution limits.

NAPA’s Ted Godbout reports on the 2027 Social Security adjustment and the related payroll changes employers need to prepare for. Benefits rise 3.6%, while the wage base subject to Social Security tax increases to $192,300. The article also covers advocates’ concerns that the worker-based inflation measure used for the adjustment does not reflect older households’ spending patterns. Employers should distinguish these announced Social Security figures from the separate IRS limits for retirement-plan contributions, which were still forthcoming when the article appeared.

Senior advocates say the 3.6% Social Security increase still won’t keep up with the expenses many retirees face. Their criticism centers on the inflation measure used to set benefits, which reflects spending by workers rather than older households. Some favor an index weighted toward older consumers’ costs, including healthcare. That would require a policy change. The announced increase follows the existing formula, and advocacy for a different measure hasn’t changed the amount payable in 2027.

New York employers should review agreements requiring employees to repay money when employment ends before a specified date, Jackson Lewis advises. The amended Trapped at Work Act restricts those agreements but preserves conditional exceptions for transferable education credentials, bonuses and relocation assistance. Although the article discusses competing readings of the effective-date language, the [official New York statute](https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/LAB/A37) lists December 19, 2026. Qualifying tuition agreements must be separate from employment contracts, cap repayment at actual costs and prorate it over the required service period. Employers should check their forms and termination triggers against the [statutory conditions](https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/laws/LAB/1052), rather than assuming every repayment provision must disappear.

Twenty years of excessive-fee litigation have made retirement-plan governance a recurring litigation issue. Lockton reviews the evolution of claims involving investment options, service-provider compensation and fiduciary oversight, along with the financial and insurance consequences of defending them. The article emphasizes records of decision-making and attention to the way coverage responds when claims arise. A settlement doesn’t necessarily establish that a plan’s process was unlawful, and insurance doesn’t substitute for that process. Lockton’s perspective is that sponsors should consider litigation readiness and coverage alongside ongoing plan administration.

Suzanne Whitlock bought a voluntary supplemental disability policy offered through her employer, insurance brokerage Lockton Companies, paid the premiums herself and kept the coverage after she left. When the insurer denied her anxiety and depression claim, she sued for benefits under ERISA and asserted alternative state law claims. Judge Andrew Schopler held ERISA governs the policy because Lockton negotiated a 30 percent discount, marketed the benefit as carefully selected, collected and remitted premiums, reported the plan on its Form 5500 and, decisively for the safe harbor analysis, received commissions and fees on the program. With the state law claims displaced, the court conducted a trial based on the written record and entered judgment for the insurer. Whitlock showed that her earnings had fallen, but didn’t prove that her condition prevented her from performing all her usual duties or working the hours her occupation normally required, and the court noted both psychiatrists tied her symptoms to situational stress while she was building her own company on 32 to 40 hours a week.

Milliman’s Vanessa Vaag works through whether a cash balance plan should let participants who reach age 59½ move their money out while still working, an option the Bipartisan American Miners Act opened in 2019. Despite the name, that law’s distribution provision is not limited to miners. It lowered the minimum in-service distribution age from 62 to 59½ for every employer’s pension plan, cash balance plans included, and a sponsor adopts the feature by amending its plan. The appeal is control. A participant who cannot direct the pooled plan’s investments can roll a vested benefit to an IRA or the employer’s 401(k) without leaving the job. Employers may reduce future pension obligations and federal pension-insurance premiums, but they need enough cash to pay departing balances and must weigh the accounting effects, especially if many participants move money out at once. Employees give up the plan’s federal pension protection and lifetime payment option for the money they withdraw. The decision facing a sponsor is whether the added flexibility solves a real workforce problem, and Vaag recommends starting with an estimate of how many employees would actually use the option.

With collective investment trusts now the preferred DC vehicle over mutual funds, a useful refresher on oversight. CITs are bank products supervised by banking regulators, mutual funds are SEC-registered, and when a CIT holds retirement plan assets, ERISA's fiduciary duties apply to those responsible for it. The experts' shared point is that the vehicle matters less than the sponsor's process, quarterly monitoring of performance, expenses, and the trustee's own track record.

The week's second lopsided retirement vote. The Tax Relief for Fraud Victims Act, H.R. 9500, passed the House 408 to 17, sponsored by Representatives Max Miller of Ohio and Thomas Suozzi of New York. Victims persuaded to drain retirement accounts today owe the 10 percent early-withdrawal penalty on money a scammer took, and since 2018 they have had no theft-loss deduction. The bill waives the penalty, restores the deduction, extends refund deadlines, and allows one year from discovering the loss to repay the distribution back into the plan. It awaits a Senate vote.

The IDR machinery gets some plumbing: federal agencies released nine new remittance advice remark codes so payers can tell providers exactly why a claim is not surprise-billing material—a state law limits the reimbursement, the claim is ineligible for IDR, the service is not covered. The codes supplement the existing claim adjustment reason codes and become mandatory January 1, 2027. Small as it sounds, clearer remittance coding aims at the front end of the dispute pipeline, where miscommunication feeds the arbitration volumes the agencies have been trying to tame all year.

The alert turns the proposed regulations into an employer decision memo. Contributions of up to $2,500 per employee per year can flow either directly or through a cafeteria plan, income tax free but payroll taxable, and only common law employees may participate, leaving out partners and 2 percent S corporation shareholders. The program needs a written plan, DCAP style nondiscrimination testing, trustee verification of accounts rather than employee certification, and identification of contributions within 21 days.

Written for self insured organizations, large deductible programs, and captives, the point is that a reserve increase is not by itself bad news. Three complementary diagnostics—actual versus expected development, a reserve walk between evaluation dates, and frequency and severity analysis—turn the periodic reserve review into a tool for spotting emerging trends and supporting funding decisions.

The Retirement Learning Center addresses what happens to outstanding 401(k) loan balances when employees arrive through a merger or acquisition, a recurring administration question in deal integration.

Two district courts issued ERISA venue rulings within a day of each other, and both moved the case out of the plaintiff's chosen forum. In one, a 401(k) fiduciary-breach class action filed in the Southern District of California was transferred to Nebraska under section 1404(a), where the plan is administered and its fiduciaries sit. Useful reading for anyone choosing where to file an ERISA case, or trying to move one.

Products must innovate within the fiduciary framework. The fiduciary framework should not be diluted to accommodate products.

Most employee complaints involve relatively minor issues. Questions about vacation time, payroll, benefits, or workplace policies are common in every organization.

Milliman walks through how pension plans should handle uncashed benefit checks, a recurring administrative problem that carries real fiduciary, financial, and regulatory consequences.

Boutwell Fay's walkthrough of the August 11 employer-contribution proposed regulations for Trump Accounts, the third set of rules for the new accounts, with the nondiscrimination overlay plan sponsors will actually administer.

Experts from Groom Law Group and CAPTRUST answer questions concerning retirement plan administration and regulations.

Ted Benna says the new employer-funded plan is designed to help workers cover short-term financial needs without tapping retirement savings.

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.

As hardships arise, employers rethink whether retirement plans should focus solely on preserving nest eggs—or also help workers weather today’s storm.