Nevin's Data "Points"

  A new report suggests that small business owners broadly support state-run IRA programs — with the strongest backing among newer firms. Or at least they did. The just-published  survey  comes from Pew Charitable Trusts, which has previously (and consistently) chronicled support for these programs among small businesses.  This latest was conducted among employers in three states where that type of legislation has been introduced:  Massachusetts , Pennsylvania, and  Washington .  According to Pew, support is strong across the board: 84% of respondents in Massachusetts, 76% in Pennsylvania, and 73% in Washington favor establishing an automated savings program (ASP). The report also highlights bipartisan backing, with majorities of Republican, Democratic, and independent business owners expressing support.  It further finds “statistically significant” support among newer firms, those with moderate revenues, service-sector businesses, and — perhaps n...

  After years of anticipation — and months of litigation — the Department of Labor’s latest attempt to expand the definition of fiduciary investment advice is now dead. That said, and with apologies to Mark Twain, reports of the “death” of the fiduciary rule are somewhat exaggerated. The 2024 version — the so-called Retirement Security Rule — was  vacated , which, in legal terms, means we treat it as if it never existed. But ERISA’s fiduciary framework remains very much alive. Indeed, for advisors already serving as fiduciaries for retirement plans under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, the practical impact of the recent court ruling is minimal. Advisors serving as 3(21) fiduciaries or 3(38) investment managers were — and remain — subject to ERISA’s duties of prudence and loyalty.  Many advisory firms, frankly, had already adopted procedures and business models that would likely have satisfied even the Obama-era fiduciary rule. Where the rule...

  I recently stumbled across a report that claimed a “Massive Gap Between Participant and Attorney Recoveries in ERISA Lawsuits.” That wasn’t exactly news to me, though it was a handy quantification [i]  of a subset of ERISA settlements to make the case that the per-participant recoveries in ERISA litigation pale in comparison to the 25%–33% “pay day” that the plaintiffs’ bar gets in cases where there is a settlement. The  report  — by Davis & Harman — focused on 27 settlements in 2025 involving (only) underperformance and excessive fee cases. In producing their conclusion, they employed some math that was arguably a bit “squishy” [ii]  — and the results are all over the board — but you didn’t need to rely on that to see — and appreciate — the huge gap between what wound up in the lawyers’ pockets versus participants. The rationale is, of course, that class action suits can be expensive to mount and pursue. The attorneys take on these cases, investing their ...

   There’s a “new” retirement crisis to fret about — and it involves so-called “junk” IRAs. You may have seen the recent Wall Street Journal’s headline that proclaimed “ Forgotten 401(k) Accounts Are Costing Americans Billions in Lost Investment Gains .” This particular assertion turns out to be another spurred by (yet another) proclamation from an IRA provider (PensionBee), though this one at least doesn’t manufacture quite as ludicrous a compounding of the size and number of those accounts as others [i]  have done. More precisely, the issue they raise is that smaller retirement plan balances can, and often are, legally expunged from the plan of their prior employer into an IRA.   Now, retirement plan professionals know how this works — those who sever (or who are severed from) employment with less than a $1,000 balance will likely have that distributed to them in cash, those with balances above $7,000 [ii]  will generally have the option to leave that bal...

  Some months back, the Labor Department published an intriguing three-part “proposed rule” that, to my eye, offered helpful fiduciary tips that go well beyond pooled employer plans (PEPs). The title alone — “ Pooled Employer Plans: Big Plans for Small Businesses ” — told you all you needed to know about the motives behind the publication. And, true to form, both the data provided on the current state of pooled employer plan adoption and the focus of the request for information (RFI) included were very much in the spirit of removing barriers to PEP adoption, if not outright promotion of the same. But what I viewed as the third part of the publication (though it’s labeled V. Fiduciary Tips for Small Employers Selecting a PEP) was, to my eye, the most intriguing aspect, in no small part because it served as a valuable reminder that there ARE fiduciary considerations in making that choice — something that purveyors of that option have been known to gloss over. As I was recently scann...