DE Under 3: Court Held That Workday Was an “Agent” to Employers Licensing its AI Applicant Screening Tools
Business Associates Here, There, and Everywhere: When Does Your Service Provider Really Need to Sign a HIPAA Business Associate Agreement?
In House Counsel: How To Measure the Effectiveness of Your Staffing Strategy
Sitting with the C-Suite: Identifying Opportunities to Leverage Human Capital
The CCPA for the Land Title Industry: Service Providers and Sale of Data Under the CCPA
Podcast - Risk Management: Troubleshooting & Problem Solving
Cybersecurity in the investment management industry
FCPA Compliance and Ethics Report-Episode 157-Training of Third Parties Under the FCPA
Special Report: The Hot-ish Swag at LegalTech New York 2015
As a plan fiduciary, I still can’t believe it. A Third Party Administrator (TPA) we terminated was trying to hold us up for valuations and a Form 5500 we paid for, as part of, annual administration. It was $80,000....more
As we bid farewell to 2024 and look ahead to the new year, we reflect on the many evolving compliance obligations that health and welfare plan sponsors tackle each year. Although this list is by no means exhaustive, it...more
We are pleased to present our annual End of Year Plan Sponsor “To Do” Lists. This year, we present our “To Do” Lists in four separate SW Benefits Updates. This Part 1 covers year-end health and welfare plan issues. Parts 2,...more
On April 14, 2021, the U.S. Department of Labor’s (“DOL”) Employee Benefits Security Administration (“EBSA”) issued its first cybersecurity best practices guidance for retirement plans. The EBSA guidance was highly...more
by Becky Achten New guidance from the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) affirms that both sides—retirement plans and welfare plans—must take steps to secure participant data from cybercrime. In 2021 the...more
A little more than three years ago, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) posted cybersecurity guidance on its website for ERISA plan fiduciaries. That guidance extended only to ERISA-covered retirement plans, despite health and...more
On December 30, 2021, the U.S. Department of Labor (“DOL”) issued Field Assistance Bulletin No. 2021-03 (“FAB”), announcing its temporary enforcement policy for group health plan service provider disclosures under ERISA...more
The Department of Labor (DOL) recently issued new guidance on best practices for maintaining cybersecurity in connection with ERISA plans (the Guidance). The Guidance, which is intended for sponsors, fiduciaries, record...more
To increase protections for the estimated $9.3 trillion in American retirement assets, the Department of Labor (DOL) has begun a new cybersecurity audit initiative for retirement plans. After providing its first set of...more
For the first time, the U.S. Department of Labor's (DOL) Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) has released cybersecurity guidance aimed at protecting workers' retirement benefits. The guidance, which was released...more
In a June 14, 2021 information letter, the US Department of Labor (DOL) opined that a claimant appealing an adverse benefit determination under a plan covered by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended...more
In light of a new DOL audit initiative and increasing cybersecurity threats to ERISA benefit plans, ERISA plan sponsors and fiduciaries should be prepared to answer some important questions: Do the cybersecurity programs of...more
It’s been, as the song goes, a long, long time coming. In April, the Department of Labor issued its first ever formal cybersecurity guidance for retirement plan sponsors and retirement plan fiduciaries, and for the service...more
Retirement plans are increasingly subject to cybersecurity issues, and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is taking notice. On April 14, 2021, the DOL published cybersecurity guidance “for plan sponsors, plan fiduciaries,...more
On April 14, 2021, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) released three-part guidance on cybersecurity issues for employee benefit plans, marking its first significant commentary on the issue since its comprehensive but...more
Today, the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) issued much anticipated cybersecurity guidance for employee retirement plans. This comes more than four and a half years after the ERISA...more
One of the last things pension plan participants would want to learn as they get ready to celebrate the Christmas holiday is that personal data from their pension accounts may have been compromised. This is the case,...more
How Retirement Plan Providers Can Deal With The Fiduciary Rule Change. Adapt to this change. At its prime, Blockbuster Video had 9,000 stores and was actually bought by Viacom in 1994 for $8.4 billion. Then some...more
The Future Is Now For 401(k) Plan Sponsors. The future is here. When I was the head ERISA attorney at a New York based third party administrator (TPA), I left because I saw the future of the retirement plan...more
The New Fiduciary Rule: What It Means To Plan Sponsors - Bottom line: what does it mean? More than a dozen years ago, there was a medical report that dental plaque could cause heart disease. I thought it was some...more
I had a client who had been undergoing a Department of Labor (DOL) audit. Their mistake? Years ago, a former participant asked for a distribution from this trustee directed profit sharing plan (so no 401(k)) and my client...more
I talk to a lot of advisors and I have many advisor clients around the country and one of the things that I keep on hearing is that even with fee disclosure regulations almost 4 years later, it is still difficult to get...more
The Struggles Of Being A Retirement Plan Provider And How To Manage It. What you have to deal with. Any good retirement plan financial advisor will tell you that relationships in the retirement plan business mean...more
On April 6, 2015, the U.S. Department of Labor (Department) issued its final rule defining who is a fiduciary of an employee benefit plan under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) as a result of giving...more
What Plan Sponsors Need to Know Now - On April 5, 2016, the U.S. Department of Labor released a new definition of what constitutes a fiduciary to a retirement plan. While the new guidance clarified that certain...more