As retirement plan sponsors, you have a fiduciary responsibility to act prudentlty. If you sponsor a pension plan, hiking your financial advisor’s fees while your returns suffered would certainly raise a few eyebrows with your participants and the Department of Labor.
So it turns out, that the New York State Comptroller (who didn’t know what the yield curve when he was elected to the job by the State Legislature after the previous was convicted of using a state paid chauffeur to drive his wife around) has reportedly paid the state’s pension fund’s financial advisors (he runs the state pension) an increase of 163% in fees over the last 5 years while the state pension fund’s returns lagged. I’m sure most of the financial advisors in this audience have probably has to lower their fees over the last five years than raise them.
Don’t expect any participant lawsuits or DOL oversight since the plan isn’t subject to ERISA because of that government exclusion from coverage rule.