401(k) fees and disclosure, fiduciary rules, mutual funds, Social Security, retirement planning.
171 articles · page 7 of 9
The author of “How 401(k) Fees Destroy Wealth and How Investors Can Protect Themselves” will be interviewed by Larry Rifkin on WATR Radio at 12:30 pm, EST, Tuesday, May 7. Rifkin, the host of “Talk of the Town” on WATR Radio (1320 AM)) in Waterbury, Connecticut, will interview author Chuck Epstein about the impact and…
Just as the PBS Frontline documentary (“The retirement Gamble” which aired April 23, 2013) has significantly ruffled the 401(k) industry, a new audio and Government Accountability Office (GAO) report has an unnamed 401(k) provider on tape as trying to convince a caller about the benefits of rolling over their 401(k) into the unnamed 401(k) company’s…
Barbara Roper, Director of Investor Protection, Consumer Federation of America, is one of the few people representing individual investors in the U.S. But she and the federation have a tough job. They have to present the interests of individual investors to an apathetic Washington audience who responds better to the hundreds of millions spent by…
Advocates for passive investing, mutual fund fee disclosure, fiduciary reform and the critics of the nation’s poorly designed $10 trillion 401(k) and retirement industry gained some high ground in this critical debate last night (April 23, 2013) in the PBS Frontline segment, “The Retirement Gamble.” Host and co-writer Martin Smith used case studies of different…
Crisis management is a well-discussed topic in corporate PR. So it should not be surprising that the upcoming PBS Frontline segment, “The Retirement Gamble,” slated to air April 23, should focus more attention on excessive fees and how they hurt investor returns. (Check local listings here.) This rare national airing of bad news about abuses…
401(k)s are the achilles heel of employer-employee relations since many plans are not well supervised and managed with an eye on containing fees and expenses. These higher fees cost participants thousands of dollars over their working careers and are designed to benefit 401(k) plan administrators, not workers. When combined with anti-fiduciary practices, this is a…
In 2013, the current industry standard when providing financial advice to individuals is to adopt a holistic approach. Advisers commonly ask their clients about their financial and estate planning goals, risk tolerances, tax situations, income expectations, claims on existing assets, retirement plans, even medical-related questions about how long they expect to live. But when providing…
The new “2013 Retirement Confidence Survey,” conducted by the Employee Benefit Research Institute and Mathew Greenwald & Associates, has some new data on the poor state of millions of Americans to enjoy a financially secure retirement. Here are some of the results. (Note: The key points indicated by quote marks below come directly from the…
The investment committee of the $265 billion California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS) is evaluating the impact of fees it is paying for active management and whether those fees are justified, according to a report in Investment News. The problem is that it is expensive and problematical to pick the right active managers who will…
For the past three decades, the SEC has been talking about investigating mutual fund company fee practices, including revenue sharing, sub-transfer-agent, 12(b)-1 and fund company conference support. Now, in March 2013, the SEC has again announced it will spring into action and conduct “a nationwide initiative to review mutual fund distribution fees. Based on this…
About half of 401(k) participants still do not know what they are paying in fees and expenses for their plans, according to LIMRA Retirement Research. The study found that this was about the same percentage that existed before the new Department of Labor (DOL) fee disclosure regulations went into effect in the spring 2012. A…
There is good and bad news in the most recent Fidelity study on average 401(k) balances. The good news is that 401(k) balances grew by almost 12% in 2012, making the average 401(k) account $77,300, up from $69,100 in 2011. According to Fidelity, the nation’s largest 401(k) administrator, average 401(k) balances rose sharply due to…
NBC News reported that one in three Americans are using their 401(k) retirement assets to pay current living expenses. While that is an expected event coming right after the worst recession in modern history, that news, along with the following comment, miss the most important—and politically incorrect point in the story—that real wages have not…
Conflicts-of-interest between financial advisors and their own clients remains a major problem in the financial services business since it costs investors billions and violates the fiduciary standard, according to author Chuck Epstein. “Conflicts-of-interest are common, especially in the mutual fund industry where fund companies pay investment professionals a fee, called revenue sharing, for recommending their…
As Congress debates tax rates and potential cuts to entitlements, many Americans face the longer-term reality of a financially uncertain retirement plagued by historically low investment returns, politically-motivated attacks on Social Security and Medicare, and stagnant wages. Recovery Times To Recoup A Housing Price Loss The trillions of dollars lost in home equity could take…
Equity mutual fund investors are incurring unfair trading costs of up to $10 billion annually, which penalizes long-term investors. The industry knows about this problem, but does not want to correct it, even if there is a viable solution, according to financial expert Seymour Sacks. Here are some reasons for the industry’s resistance to change.
The new Department of Labor (DOL) regulations on 401(k) fee and expense disclosure will have a profound impact on the trillion dollar retirement industry. But these big changes hinge on whether millions of 401(k) investors want to save their own money by getting better informed. Now, a new book examines how these new regulations work,…
New Department of Labor (DOL) regulations on 401(k) fee and expense disclosure are having a profound impact on the trillion dollar retirement industry. But these big changes hinge on whether millions of 401(k) investors want to save their own money by getting better informed. And if you do, you can save thousand of…
August 30, 2012 is a first big day for the new era of disclosure covering millions of 401(k) investors. That’s the day 401(k) plan sponsors must disclose their plan-level fees and expenses to employees who participate in the company’s 401(k) plan. These disclosures are part of the historic U.S. Department of Labor’s new 401(k) fee…
If you ask any investor: “Which federal agency is supposed to be looking out for your best interests?” the most common answer would be the SEC. That is the wrong answer. The correct one is the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), which will enact new regulations in July that will finally give individual investors some…
