Nevin's Data "Points"

After a dozen years here at PLANSPONSOR, effective November 1 , I have joined the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) in Washington, D.C., as Director, Education and External Relations, and Co-Director of the EBRI Center for Research on Retirement Income. I have long had a strong personal and professional admiration for the work that EBRI does in helping provide our industry with valuable and objective information and am thrilled to be able to be part of those efforts at this critical juncture. It has been my great privilege over this past decade and change to share with you some of my thoughts and observations in this space. You have been generous both with your comments and commentary on those musings, as well as our publications overall. While it’s not quite Thanksgiving, I thought I would dedicate this final “IMHO” to sharing some of the things for which I’m thankful: I’m thankful that the vast majority of plan sponsors continued to support their workplace retirement prog...

When I’m talking to plan sponsors (and advisers) about the challenges of being an ERISA fiduciary, I’m generally inclined to emphasize the awesome responsibilities that come with the “assignment”: the impact exerted on participant retirement savings; the admonition to ensure that fees paid by, and services rendered to, the plan are reasonable; the implications of the prudent expert rule; and the liability (and personal liability, at that), not only for your own acts, but for the acts of your co-fiduciaries (and hence an urgency around knowing who those co-fiduciaries are). I’m inclined to talk about the limitations of ERISA 404(c) in providing a shield against all that potential liability. I’ll remind them that the Labor Department considers them responsible for all participant-directed investments outside 404(c)’s provisions, and note how frequently participant directions tend to fall outside those provisions. I’ll tell them how important it is to read the plan document, and to make...

I recently found myself driving in an unfamiliar city without the aid of a GPS (global positioning system). Sadly, I had become so accustomed to having that device available, I hadn’t even taken the time to print out instructions from any of the usual Internet sources, and while there were maps in the vehicle, none were of the area in question. That didn’t matter, I told myself—because I had made that drive before, had a pretty good idea of where I needed to be and, armed with a pretty reliable memory for such things, I set out with only a little trepidation. Just about the time I was getting pretty confident in my ability to navigate without all the high-tech “crutches,” I was thrown a series of curves. The primary route was closed due to construction, the rerouting didn’t seem to take into account where I was trying to get to, an unexpected one-way street suddenly emerged going the “wrong” way, and then I found myself directed onto a parkway whose designers had apparently never co...

We spent some time this past weekend getting my eldest daughter squared away in her new apartment. It’s her first, and as with nearly all first apartments, there is a lot you need to get that you never needed in your room at home or in your dorm away at college. So we headed out to IKEA. Those who have never had occasion to visit an IKEA store should check it out at least once. They are mammoth stores—big on the outside and seemingly even more massive on the inside. It’s the kind of store you can easily get lost in (not to worry, they have their own food court inside), and yet it’s very hard to simply get from point A to point B, even if you know what you want to buy. About the only way to get through the store is to wander along the winding path the IKEA folks have constructed that takes you—literally—through every display imaginable.1 But the really interesting thing about the IKEA shopping process is that you not only have to find what you want, you must write down the part n...

A few weeks back, I offered some notions about what the next five years will bring in terms of industry trends (see “ IMHO: Fifth ‘Avenues’ ”). However, in preparing for our recent PLANADVISER National Conference, I came up with five more. Everybody isn’t going to do automatic enrollment. Without question, automatic enrollment has done much to shore up the retirement savings rates of American workers. For plan sponsors and participants alike, the efficacy of an approach that doesn’t require participants to complete an enrollment form, deliberate over investment choices, set upon a desired rate of savings, or even darken the door of an education meeting has done much to get tens of thousands of workers off on the right retirement savings foot. And, for the vast majority of workers, the ability to do the right thing without doing anything at all has not only been well-received, but much appreciated as well. Not that automatic enrollment as outlined by the Pension Protection Act (PPA)...