401(k) Roundtable

You ever go into a meeting thinking you are going to talk about one thing, but you pretty quickly realize that the person you are meeting with is going above and beyond your expectations? Well, that was my experience with this episode! My guest, George Castineiras brings a unique perspective to the 401(k) Fridays Podcast  as he combines his background running the retirement practice for a large re...

Over the years, and certainly recently there has been a lot of focus on the Department of Labor and their role in overseeing workplace retirement plans.  What some might not realize or fully appreciate is the role if the Internal Revenue Service, better known as the IRS in overseeing retirement plans.  To help employers get their arms around things I was excited to have Susan Mehlman, a Director i...

This is the second episode of today's double header.  If you haven't listened to my conversation with Susan Mehlman at Moss Adams about the IRS and your 401(k) Plan, be sure to check that out as well.  This episode  is an updated version of one of the very first episodes on the podcast.  This features my conversation with Sam Henson, an ERISA Attorney and the VP & Director of Legislative & Regulat...

This episode outlines how the relationship between behavioral finance and retirement plan design has evolved in recent years.  Stuart Ritter is fantastic and was definitely one of my favorite guests on the podcast last year.  Our conversation is fast paced and full of great stories and examples for employers who are looking to get their arms around behavioral finance and how embracing the concepts...

With almost 70 podcast episodes to date, we've had some amazing guests who have shared their experiences and perspectives to help employers better understand their retirement plans.  Out of all our prior episodes, some of our more popular ones have been where we have had business leaders in the retirement industry talk about the current and future trends they see and how they are positioning their...

Automatic enrollment, automatic increases and investment default strategies, you've likely heard about these fundamental plan design features either from our prior guests on the podcast, current service partners or conversations with your peers.  If you aren't familiar, we do spend the first couple of minutes of this episode providing a foundation and background.  However, my guest Jeff Bograd, a...

Have index funds dropped the proverbial mic, walked off the stage and declared victory in the decades long debate of active vs. passive investment management?  My guest, Sean Lewis, a CFA and Institutional Investment Strategist with BlackRock has a few things to say about the topic!  He does a great job explaining the current market forces driving the continued growth in index investing, questions...

Ah the good old days, when life was simpler, people retired with pension plans, social security was fully funded and you spent your retirement golden years in relative financial security.  Fast forward to today, there is a perception that our retirement system is broken, and we are either already in or headed for a dramatic retirement crisis.  Much of the blame for our current state of  retirement...

As a listener to the podcast, you might be "in the know" about the current retirement plan trends and motivated to tackle new ideas or strategies to put your employees on track for better retirement outcomes.  But what can you do when not everyone in the company or on your retirement plan committee is on board with you.  How do you either get the ball rolling, get the right people to the table or...

We have spent a lot of time on the podcast talking about how to make your retirement plan stronger and healthier.  Today, we turn the conversation on its head and discuss strategies to make your retirement plan unattractive, to plaintiff's attorneys and the ERISA lawsuits.  With me I have two previous podcast guests, we have our legal eagle Tom Clark, ERISA Attorney with Wagner Law Group and our v...

Get beyond the eyeball grabbing headlines, the ever present three bullet summaries and hear some well thought out perspectives to help guide conversations and decisions in your workplace retirement plans.  Our guest today, Brian Reid, the Chief Economist at the Investment Company Institute or ICI, shares that goal and provides some great food for thought for you.  He addresses some recent stories...

With all of the 401(k) and ERISA lawsuits floating around these days, we have gotten a fair number of questions from employers about fiduciary liability insurance.  We have also made reference on several prior episodes that it is critical to ensure you have a well crafted fiduciary liability insurance.  As they say, never bring a knife to a gun fight, so I reached out to the biggest gun I know,  D...

This is our second episode where we tackle the ins and outs of retirement plan discrimination and compliance testing.  The first episode we released a few weeks ago hit on some of the core concepts around discrimination testing and laid five strategies to improve your results.  Today, we pick up where we left off with the last episode and address some more complex concepts around discrimination te...

In prior episodes we have talked about how to " Transition from Financial Education to Financial Wellness ", how " Financial Wellness is a Trend too Big to be Ignored " and we have even talked with Cisco Systems to learn how they designed and rolled out their financial wellness strategy.  What we haven't spent any time on is making sure that as you introduce or expand your financial or general wel...

Whether you are aware of it or not, several individual states are getting ready to launch state sponsored retirement plans.  Their intent is to help workers who are not eligible for or not offered a retirement plan through their employer.  What you also might not know is that in the Pacific Northwest, Oregon, the Beaver State, is likely going to be the first state with a live program with a schedu...

Whether you are passing or failing your discrimination testing, well, this is maybe a bit more timely if you are failing testing, this is a great episode to help get your arms around some of the key concepts and fundamentals behind coverage and discrimination testing.  My guest is Doug Van Galder, a Compliance Analyst with the ERISA Law Firm Boutwell Fay, who has worked with countless employers ov...

Scott Knowles , the internal architect of the Financial Wellness program at Cisco Systems stopped by the podcast to share his experience to help other employers who are considering going down a similar path. He provides candid perspectives on the why behind their program, how they rolled it out and what they plan to do in the future to keep improving upon their early successes!   Before we get sta...

Regardless of how you feel about visiting the doctor, after you listen to my conversation with Dr. Greg Kasten , the Founder and CEO of Unified Trust Company  and if you follow a few of his prescriptions or strategies they could help you make a lasting impact on the future of your retirement plan and workforce!  There are a lot of memorable takeaways for anyone looking to explore some new concepts...

As a retirement plan sponsor, you are constantly bombarded with sales calls, articles, new products, updates on litigation and much more. This information overload can make it challenging to filter through the noise and bright shiny objects to focus on what's really important to your retirement plan and your participants. With that in mind, I was excited to have Tom Kmak, CEO and co-founder of Fid...

Today is inauguration day and depending on your political leanings, it represents the beginning, the end, the beginning of the end or some other variation on that theme!  However, what I am excited about is sharing my recent conversation with Bob Holcomb, ERISA Attorney and Vice President of Legislative and Regulatory Affairs at Empower Retirement where we discuss what employers should expect from...

If you are interested to learn how thinking differently about your company culture and employee benefits could help you win the battle for talent today and in the future, then you don't want to miss this episode!  And if that wasn't enough, we also reveal that we are in the midst of a complete revolution in the nature and composition of the workforce which occurs every four generations while shari...

Well here we go, kicking off another year and I couldn't be happier that the first episode of 2017 features my conversation with Meghan Murphy, Director of Thought Leadership at Fidelity Workplace Investing.  While I won't steal Meghan's thunder, I will tell you that she shares a lot of valuable information for employers that should be very helpful to your retirement plan and participants this yea...

Happy New Years and I hope that 2017 gets off to a great start for you both perennially and professionally!  After a wild 2016, I am happy to say that this is the last episode of the year which is rebroadcast of a prior episode before we release the first of many exciting new episodes in 2017!  This episode with Dr. Joe Coughlin, the founder and director of the MIT AgeLab is one of my personal all...

Happy Holidays everyone!  As a little treat here are two of our more popular episodes bundled into one for your listening pleasure.  Both episodes feature Jason Roberts, ERISA Attorney and the Founder and CEO of the Pension Resource Institute which provides strategic consulting and training to retirement plan service providers and fiduciary education to plan sponsors.  In the first part of the pod...

If one of your New Year's resolutions is evaluating your retirement consulting or 401(k) broker relationship, this is a must listen episode.  My guest Trisha Brambley, is the CEO of Retirement Playbook.  Her firm's sole focus is working with retirement plan sponsors and fiduciaries who are interested in benchmarking their advisor or in conducting a plan advisor search.  Over the past several years...