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Fiduciary responsibility compels plan providers to maintain a safe, fair and prudently managed plan for participants. Advisors should communicate openly to plan sponsors about their responsibilities and risks, which can vary depending on several factors including whether they’re engaged as a 3(21) or 3(38) fiduciary. Here are three types of fiduciary risk that your plan sponsor clients should be aware of, plus some ways to help mitigate them.
Scouting for new clients is something most advisors do continuously throughout their careers. However, generating new business for your practice takes experience and finesse, and many advisors find themselves falling into a few common pitfalls. Here are five mistakes that could keep you from prospecting productively — and ways to avoid them.
Food manufacturing powerhouse Kellogg was recently sued by a former employee, who alleges that the company failed to meet its fiduciary duty in administrating its 401(k) plan. The suit claims that, since at least 2016, Kellogg allowed excessive recordkeeping and managed account fees to accrue and did not take timely action to keep employee-covered fees reasonable. The lawsuit names the company, its board of directors and two separate committees that helped manage the company’s plan.
Litigation over retirement plan fees has been on the rise in recent years. Since 2020, there have been more than 170 such suits, breaking previous records. And while these cases used to affect mostly larger plans, smaller plans with fewer assets have become targets of aggressive prosecutors. Defense costs for such cases often exceed several million dollars — with some lawyers insisting on retainers of up to $15 million. Settlements and damages awarded to plaintiffs can also easily reach the multimillion-dollar range.
As the U.S. struggles to navigate the current bear market, plan sponsors may feel there’s little they can do to help employees’ retirement savings weather the current economic storm. As a trusted advisor, many will look to you for guidance and reassurance. And while you can’t move markets (if you can, please let us know), this is a good time to encourage sponsors to focus on aspects of their plan they can exert greater control over.
Retirement powerhouse Fidelity recently announced that they will soon become the first major 401(k) provider to offer cryptocurrency to participants, allowing retirement investors to allocate as much as 20% of their contributions to Bitcoin as part of the core investment lineup. Many financial professionals and legislators, however, are advising extreme caution for sponsors and participants who choose to include Bitcoin in their 401(k)s. As one of the largest asset managers in the world, this move has the potential to impact 401(k) savers adversely should Bitcoin remain on its volatile path.
You run a respectable wealth management practice with a hard-earned stable of clients, but you’d like to further expand your book of business. Over the years, you’ve found that retail investors can be slow to grow their portfolios — particularly during volatile markets. Plus, retention can be an ongoing struggle, and the availability of free trading platforms doesn’t help matters. You want to diversify your offering with business that’s more scalable, stable and tends to require fewer acquisitions before making an appreciable difference in your bottom line.
Prospecting can be an arduous, hit-or-miss task, with time-consuming campaigns often resulting in just a few bites — some might even compare the difficulty with panning for gold. Increase your odds of success and make your efforts more productive by avoiding these missteps.
It’s the scenario every advisor fears. A long-term client calls out of the blue. You think they’re just checking in, but when they mention how they’ve appreciated your work over the years, you begin to realize it’s a prelude to bad news. Then they drop the dreaded phrase, “We’ve decided to move in another direction …” And just like that, the client is gone.
Over the last two years, approximately 150 ERISA lawsuits challenging purportedly excessive retirement plan fees have been filed in U.S. federal court. However, more than a dozen of those cases had been put on hold pending a recent Supreme Court case — Hughes v. Northwestern University — examining the plausibility of a breach of fiduciary duty claim by current and former university retirement plan participants. In January, SCOTUS delivered its opinion, ruling that the petitioners, originally dismissed by a district court and upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, did in fact plausibly state their claim. It vacated the Seventh Court ruling and remanded the case for further review.