A Red Flag for a ‘Red Flag’ Report
Did you hear the one about how nearly all U.S. retirement plans have “at least one regulatory or fiduciary ‘red flag’ violation”? Well, here’s hoping you haven’t. Because this so-called “analysis” of Form 5500 filings claims to have discovered that 84% of all (that’s right ALL) retirement plans in the United States have “at least one likely Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) red flag from a regulatory and/or fiduciary violation.” Now, having grabbed your attention, you probably won’t be surprised to find in the fine print of the press release an opportunity to “schedule a cost-free benchmarking audit.” But before you do so, you might want to take a look at the criteria this firm designates as a “red flag.” From their press release , “Abernathy-Daley defines red flag violations as either ‘infractions, fineable offenses, fiduciary failure, or plan malpractice’ and are separated into two main categories: Regulatory Infraction Red Flags (RIRF) and Egregious Plan Mi...