Insights for Fiduciaries
MANAGEMENT THEMES
Guidance for executives and managers who serve in the fiduciary role.
All articles appearing on this page are also published in the Journal of Compensation and Benefits.
LATEST ARTICLE
Traits of Effective Committee Members
To properly monitor employee benefit plans, committee members need to have a variety of abilities that support the committee’s success and help it achieve its objectives. Several personal characteristics are present in the most effective executives who oversee those plans.
TRENDING ARTICLE
AI is Radically Transforming Benefit Plan
Management
Artificial Intelligence (“AI”) innovations in the marketplace and vigorous activity among legislators at the federal and state levels events are rapidly transforming traditional vendor management and employee communication responsibilities for committees that oversee employee benefit plans (“EBP”). Few fiduciary committees have fully realized AI’s impact.
Controls
A Model for Managing Fiduciary Risk
Tactics for managing the risks related to employee benefit plans are not intuitive and pose a significant challenge for the typical executives who populate a plan management committee. Current events mandate a change in thinking and action. This article describes a framework of practices that meets the challenge head-on.
Governance
Principled Performance Drives Fiduciary Excellence
Principled Performance is an approach to the fiduciary role by which managers reliably achieve objectives, address uncertainty, and act with integrity on behalf of the employees and their beneficiaries who participate in employee benefit plans.
Administration
Cybersecurity in the Committee Room
Cybersecurity is not merely a technology issue. For that reason, fiduciary committees must understand they have a legal duty to protect the personally identifiable information, personal health information, and assets of their employee benefit plans from exposure and to protect electronic systems from exploitation by hackers. Read how some fiduciary committees address the challenge.
Governance
Fiduciary Vulnerability Takes a Hit
Due to the explosion of excessive fee lawsuits against employers that sponsor qualified retirement plans, a paradigm shift is underway among insurers of fiduciary liability risk. This article contains an outline of action steps that will serve as a guide for conforming to insurers’ requirements.
Administration
Learn what considerations plan sponsors should resolve when a competitor or aggregator acquires their recordkeeper or third-party administration firm.
Administration
Bridging the Gap Between Fiduciary Committees and IT
Cybersecurity threats to employee benefit plans demand that fiduciary committees and information technology departments engage in a new era of collaboration.
Controls
Can Service Providers be Trusted?
Service providers to retirement plans are changing their stripes. That makes the job of selecting and monitoring them more challenging than ever.
Administration
The administration of employer-sponsored retirement plans is the discipline that holds the most significant threat of economic and reputational risk for thousands of enterprises. Benefit plan fiduciaries are universally susceptible to failure in five critical activities.
Governance
This article reveals the topics that dominate the minds of fiduciary committee members and human resources executives.
Investments
A Volatile Stock Market is a Menace for Fiduciaries
Finance executives and human
resources leaders face peculiar challenges when securities markets swing wildly. If followed, several steps can cut their legal risk and sustain their peace of mind despite chaotic times.
Administration
Develop Your Fiduciary Toolkit
A fiduciary toolkit equips finance and human resources executives with knowledge, procedures, and performance measurements to drive operations, strategy, and compliance.
Governance
Ethics and Culture: A Predictor of Fiduciary Behavior
Developing the culture of character and integrity of a business enterprise falls at the feet of leaders in human resources, human capital management, and talent
management.
Governance
Employee Benefit Risk Management from a Board’s Perspective
The responsibility for constructing an enterprise risk management system
begins with an organization’s
directors.
Administration
Payroll is a Fiduciary’s Trojan Horse
Like the hollow wooden Trojan horse in Greek mythology that concealed an invading force, payroll can secretly undermine the compliance efforts
of every organization that sponsors an ERISA qualified retirement plan.
Investments
Selecting and Supervising 3(38) Investment Managers
Delegating investment decisions to an ERISA 3(38) Investment Manager (“EIM”) can be a huge relief to retirement plan sponsors who are saturated with fiduciary responsibilities and their attendant liabilities.
Controls
How Technology is Transforming the Fiduciary Role
While compliance pressures continue to rise for executives charged with overseeing their organizations’ employee benefit plans that are qualified under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (“ERISA”) sophisticated technology solutions are beginning to offer a reassuring light at the end of a seemingly endless regulatory tunnel.
