The Rosenbaum Law Firm P.C. Blog

I live in a village where school board members don’t understand how things look and the inherent conflict of interest. I think a school board president who was hired as the library’s attorney looks bad when she collects a retainer and $12,500 for two real estate closings where no mortgage was involved by the library. I believe if something doesn’t look right, it shouldn’t be done.

If you decide to hire a 401(k) plan provider because you already have an existing business relationship in another realm such as payroll, banking, or financial, things may not look right, especially when you leverage your 401(k) plan to get better terms such an increase in your bank line of credit.

I think if you’ve read my work, you know my animus towards the law firm I worked at as an associate. That stint there, made me realize that I was better off with my own practice because I could fail or succeed on my merits, rather than be beholden to a bureaucracy that wasn’t going to let me succeed, no matter what I did. Like I said in the past, it would take three levels of partners and six months to get one article approved. In my own practice, I wrote 25 articles in that time frame.

It’s been 12 years since I left and I only was there for about 2 years and 2 months as the ambitious associate who had dreams of a National ERISA practice. I think my complaints about the place were part of my shtick and part of my story. That stint was probably my greatest failure and yet it led to my greatest success with my own practice. It developed into a chip on my shoulder because I knew when I left that I would succeed and they would fall apart because I saw the future of social media and the managing attorney would scoff at it.

It was only recently that I finally realized that animus. While I was glad to go on my own and I know I could never succeed there, what made me angry all those years is the realization that my failure there and their treatment of me as a failure, made me feel that I looked like a failure to the people that I cared about. I had faith in myself and what I could do in my own practice, but I had an anxiety that it made the people I cared about, lose faith in me. I know it’s silly and probably best to keep these feelings hidden, but I have always felt the need, to be honest with my audience.

New cryptocurrency guidance from the Labor Department (DOL) had made people wary that they threaten brokerage windows. I disagree.

Under that crypto guidance, the DOL suggests that employers could be responsible for risky crypto trades their 401(k) plan participants make. I think the DOL’s guidance is rather clear, it’s on the use of cryptocurrencies and I don’t think there has been a change in the DOL’s thinking.

My latest article on JDSupra.com can be found here.

My latest article for JDSupra.com can be found here.

My latest article on JDSupra.com can be found here.

I used to live in a great school district until school board members stayed on after their kids graduated and they realized with zero opposition from the community and the Superintendent, they could dole out jobs to their friends and family.

For the first time in forever, the school board will be contested with two elections for two seats. It should be interesting how things will end up, but I think an incumbent on the board for 18 years with zero opposition is going to have to deal with an angry electorate with two years of COVID. The problem for the incumbents is that on their watch, our schools are getting worse.

As a plan provider, there are times when you’re up for renewal. If you can’t recite how good your service is and what you have done for your client, you’re going through a tough time in getting retained.

Wells Fargo is the latest 401(k) plan provider to settle on a class-action case on their own plan.

Wells Fargo has agreed to pay a settlement amount of $32.5 million.

The original lawsuit claimed that upon the creation of their proprietary Wells Fargo/State Street Target collective investment trusts, or Target Date CITs, Wells Fargo added the CITs to the plan even though the funds had no prior performance history or track record which could demonstrate that they were prudent. Despite the lack of a track record, the committee defendants “mapped” nearly $5 billion of participants’ retirement savings from the plan’s previous target-date option into the Target Date CITs.In addition, the lawsuit claims that Wells Fargo also used the plan’s assets to fund the Wells Fargo/Causeway International Value Fund, as the plan’s assets constituted more than 50% of the total assets in the fund at year-end 2014.

It was also alleged that Wells Fargo selected and retained 17 Wells Fargo proprietary funds within the Plan, many of which underperformed the market.

The settlement comes after a federal judge refused Wells Fargo’s motion to throw out the case.

Someone I admire as a person is a Congressman from the other party. I donated when he first ran for Congress and needless to say, I get bombarded with emails from candidates around the country that I would never support. Just donated to a Councilman I know who is running for the Congressional seat where I live and I’m sure to get emails from the other party.

As a plan sponsor, you need to understand that participant data for your plan can and may be used to cross-sell other products if one or more of your plan providers sells them.

So it’s extremely important that you understand that and identify when and how it will be used because you may be asked about that on a plan audit by the Department of Labor and I assure you, saying you don’t know like Sgt. Schultz from Hogan’s Heroes won’t do you good.

HUB International Limited, a leading full-service global insurance brokerage, and financial services firm, announced today that it has acquired the assets of 401(k) Advisors, Inc. (401(k) Advisors).

Illinois-based 401(k) Advisors provides retirement plan consulting services with more than $1.3 billion in assets.

As long as the market does OK, I expect we will still see more mergers in the retirement plan space.