The U.S. Department of Labor's Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration has published a request in the Federal Register soliciting information from the public to assist in the development of "safe harbors" for plan administrators to follow regarding automatic rollovers of plan distributions of $5,000 or less.
A U.S. District Court judge in Hartford, Conn. certified as a class action a lawsuit that alleges that Cigna Corp. discriminated against older workers in the way the company converted to a cash balance pension plan, the Hartford Courant reports.
The value of assets in individual retirement accounts (IRAs) declined to approximately $2.4 trillion in 2001, a reduction of more than $140 billion from their 1999 peak, according to new research by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute.
More than three-quarters (79 percent) of employees surveyed admit being concerned that they will outlive their retirement savings and 76 percent are worried they will need to work during retirement, according to MetLife's 2002 Employee Benefits Trend Study.
The Bush administration's proposed regulations governing age discrimination in retirement plans would disallow some plans that are actually more generous to older workers than those that would comply under the new rules, according to a consulting firm.
PricewaterhouseCoopers has agreed to contribute $264 million to the pension plan it sponsors for nearly 47,000 workers and retirees, according to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.
David Tweedie, chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board and inventor two years ago of the FRS17 standard on pension disclosure, expects to see his standard rolled out around the world soon, according to the Financial Times.
The U.S. Department of Labor has filed a complaint against Merrill E. Schmidt DDS, Inc. and the trustee of the Merrill E. Schmidt DDS, Inc., Defined Benefit Plan, claiming violations of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).
A growing share of the U.S. work force is covered by a retirement plan, but traditional annuity-paying defined benefit (DB) pensions are steadily loosing ground to alternative retirement plan options, according to new research by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI).
