Tactics for Combating Low Bond Yields
Dividend-paying stocks and preferreds, lower-quality bonds, and stable-value funds top readers’ lists of investments for a yield-starved environment. Click here to read more
Dodd-Frank Remains Work in Progress
Four years after its passage, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act remains a work in progress. While 73 percent of its rule changes and other requirements were completed by July of 2014, 27 percent were not finished, including 11 percent on which work had not yet begun. “It won’t be until the […]
Collision Course: Social Security and a Slow-Growing Economy
Conventional wisdom holds that the Social Security program will soon become insolvent because the number of people collecting benefits has grown exponentially relative to the number of people paying into the system. That is largely true. But it is not the only challenge to the federal retirement program. In an address at the 2014 SVIA […]
An Appraisal: ERISA at 40
Forty years ago President Gerald Ford signed into law the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, better known as ERISA. Congress’ overarching goal in writing the law was to protect the interests of workplace retirement plan participants and their beneficiaries. The results have been mixed, although many of the shortcomings in the nation’s private […]
State and Local Pension Plans: Coping with Funding Challenges
Strictly by the numbers, pension plans sponsored by state and local governments do not look to be in great shape. Many plan sponsors have not been making full annual contributions to the plans, and partly as a result the average funded ratio for those plans has fallen to 71 percent from 90 percent since 2004. […]
An Inside Look at How America Saves
It should not be that difficult. For a defined contribution plan to work for you, says Jean Young, senior research analyst at Vanguard Group and lead author of its periodic report on retirement plan participant behavior, How America Saves, you simply need to save enough and invest appropriately. Unfortunately, Young said at the 2014 SVIA […]
Roundtable: The Outlook for Retirement Income Security
One could argue that the private retirement system in the U.S. is improving. Average account balances in defined contribution plans have been rising lately, to somewhere around $90,000 to $100,000 depending upon which set of data you use. The growing trend of automatically enrolling workers in their plans is undoubtedly capturing some workers who in […]
Plan Litigation: When Stable Value Becomes a Target
For three decades following passage of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act in 1974, defined contribution plans largely escaped the eye of class-action plaintiffs’ attorneys. That all changed in 2006, when an Illinois-based law firm began filing lawsuits against plan service providers, typically alleging some violation of ERISA based on the fees being charged to […]
Invesco Strategist Sees Continued Slow Growth, Low Rates in the U.S.
The Federal Reserve may have just ended its massive quantitative easing program aimed at keeping interest rates low, but don’t expect rates to spike significantly higher as a result, says Rob Waldner, chief strategist and head of multi-sector for Invesco Fixed Income. Opening the second day of the 2014 SVIA Fall Forum on October 14, […]
