The Rosenbaum Law Firm P.C. Blog

You can have the greatest idea in the retirement plan space—brilliant plan design, elegant auto features, some next-level decumulation strategy that actually solves a real problem—and it doesn’t matter if it lives in a vacuum.

Because this business isn’t just about being right. It’s about being seen.

I’ve seen too many smart people in this industry fall in love with their ideas like they’re writing the next great novel. They tweak it, refine it, polish it, and then… nothing. No distribution. No sales channel. No capital behind it. Just a great idea sitting on a shelf like a dusty law review article nobody reads.

Meanwhile, the ideas that win? They’re not always better. They’re just funded and distributed.

Distribution Is the Real Fiduciary Duty (No One Talks About)

You want to know what separates success from obscurity in this business? It’s not intelligence. It’s not innovation. It’s distribution.

Recordkeepers with scale. Advisors with relationships. Aggregators with reach. If you’re not plugged into one of those pipelines, you’re shouting into the void.

You can build the perfect retirement solution, but if no plan sponsor ever hears about it, it might as well not exist.

Money Isn’t Just Fuel—It’s Oxygen

And let’s talk about capital, because people dance around it like it’s impolite. It’s not.

Money buys time. Money buys talent. Money buys access. Most importantly, money buys the ability to survive long enough for your idea to catch on.

Without it, even the best ideas suffocate before they ever get a chance.

The Myth of “If It’s Good Enough, It Will Win”

That’s a nice story. It’s also nonsense.

Good ideas don’t automatically rise to the top. They need sponsors, champions, and platforms. They need people pushing them into the marketplace, not just believing in them.

Because in the retirement business, being right isn’t enough. You have to be present.

The Ary Rule: Innovation Without Distribution Is Just a Hobby

If you can’t get your idea in front of decision-makers—plan sponsors, advisors, consultants—it’s not a business. It’s a hobby.

And hobbies don’t change industries.

Bottom Line

You’re absolutely right. No money, no distribution, no impact.

In this business, the graveyard isn’t filled with bad ideas. It’s filled with great ones nobody ever saw.

You read enough U.S. Department of Labor / Employee Benefits Security Administration releases over the years and you start to realize something: the facts change, the villains rotate, but the plot is always the same—fiduciaries forget that this is not their money. This latest release is another reminder that ERISA is less “guidance” and more “gravity.” You can ignore it for a while, but eventually you hit the ground.

The Real Headline Isn’t the Case—It’s the Pattern

Whatever the specific enforcement hook was here—late contributions, misuse of plan assets, self-dealing, take your pick—the takeaway isn’t the violation. It’s the predictability. Every one of these cases follows the same arc: the plan sponsor treats the plan like a side account, internal controls get sloppy, service providers either miss it or look the other way, and then EBSA shows up already knowing the answer. The mistake isn’t what they did. The mistake is thinking they’d never get caught.

Fiduciary Process: The Thing Nobody Wants to Pay For (Until They Have To)

Plan sponsors love to spend money on investments, recordkeepers, and participant-facing tech. What they don’t want to spend money on is process. No one wakes up saying they need better fiduciary governance, but that’s exactly what separates the plans that end up in enforcement actions from the ones that don’t. When EBSA comes knocking, they’re not asking if your lineup looks good. They’re asking for documentation, decision-making authority, and rationale. If your answer is “we thought it made sense,” you’re already behind.

Service Providers Aren’t Off the Hook Either

These cases rarely happen in a vacuum. Advisors, TPAs, payroll providers—someone usually saw something and either didn’t understand it or didn’t want to rock the boat. Being agreeable doesn’t keep you out of trouble. It just means you’ll be included in the story when things go sideways.

The Ary Rule: If It Feels Like Your Money, You’re Already in Trouble

Plans fail when employers blur the psychological line. The second a sponsor starts thinking it’s their plan or their money, the problems begin. It’s not. You’re a fiduciary, not an owner. That distinction isn’t philosophical—it’s legal, and Employee Benefits Security Administration enforces it accordingly.

Bottom Line

This release isn’t surprising. It’s a reminder that enforcement doesn’t require new rules—just time and bad behavior. If you’re reading it thinking it couldn’t happen to you, that’s usually how it starts.

The Dayforce report (as covered by 401(k) Specialist) basically says this: after a few years of modest improvement, retirement savings took a step backward in 2025. Savings rates dipped from about 9.2% to 8.9%, participation ticked down, and more people tapped their accounts through loans. That’s the headline. The substance is more revealing—and more troubling.

People Didn’t Get Worse—They Got Squeezed

The article makes clear this isn’t about laziness or ignorance. It’s about pressure. More than one in four workers reduced contributions, and borrowing from plans increased, which tells you everything you need to know: people are using retirement plans as financial shock absorbers. When rent, food, and life get expensive, the 401(k) becomes the easiest place to “borrow from your future self.” And that’s exactly what’s happening.

The Middle Class Is Where the Damage Is

The real story isn’t the decline—it’s who is declining. The biggest pullback is among workers earning roughly $50,000 to $150,000. That’s your core workforce. Not the wealthy, not the struggling edge cases—the middle. When they start cutting back, it’s not a blip. It’s a signal. Meanwhile, disparities continue to widen: higher earners keep saving, while lower and middle-income workers fall behind. Gender and racial gaps persist, and in some cases worsen. Translation: the system is working exactly as designed—just not for everyone.

Progress Since 2022…Then a Stall

The data shows some improvement since 2022—higher savings rates, more contributions—but that progress has now stalled or reversed across key metrics like participation and loan usage. That matters. It means whatever momentum we thought we had wasn’t structural. It was conditional. And when conditions got tougher, behavior snapped back.

There Is One Bright Spot (Of Course There Is)

Gen Z is actually improving—higher participation, higher contributions, better engagement. Why? Because they’re being auto-enrolled into better-designed plans. Not because they suddenly became more disciplined than prior generations. That’s not optimism—that’s proof of concept.

The Quiet Subtext: This Is Now an Employer Problem

The article leans into something plan sponsors don’t love to hear: financial stress isn’t just personal anymore. It affects productivity, retention, and engagement. This isn’t just about retirement readiness. It’s a workforce issue.

Bottom Line (Ary Version)

This isn’t a reversal. It’s reality catching up. When people are financially strained, they save less, participate less, and borrow more. The real takeaway is simple: the system only works when people have the capacity to participate. When that capacity disappears, so does the progress.

Plan providers love to blame fees when a client walks out the door. It’s convenient, it’s easy, and most importantly, it avoids looking in the mirror. But in my experience, fees are rarely the real reason your best clients leave. Silence is.

The best clients—the engaged plan sponsors, the ones who actually care—don’t leave after one mistake. They leave after a pattern. A missed email here. A delayed response there. A question about forfeitures or eligibility that gets answered two weeks later with something that feels copied and pasted. What you don’t realize is that they’re keeping score.

And here’s the problem: they don’t complain. The worst clients complain. The best ones observe. They notice when you stop bringing ideas. They notice when meetings become routine instead of meaningful. They notice when you stop acting like a partner and start acting like a vendor.

By the time you get the termination notice, the decision was made months ago.

Good providers understand that retention isn’t about reacting—it’s about anticipation. It’s about asking questions before the client realizes there’s an issue. It’s about showing up with solutions to problems the client didn’t know they had. It’s about making the plan sponsor feel like you’re paying attention, because most providers aren’t.

If you think your service model is “fine,” that’s probably your biggest problem. Nobody leaves “fine” for worse. They leave “fine” for better.

And somewhere out there is a provider who decided your client deserved better attention than you were giving them.

Forfeitures are one of those things in a 401(k) plan that everyone thinks they understand—until they don’t. It’s a small line item, often buried in reports, but it has a way of creating outsized problems when it’s ignored.

Most providers treat forfeitures like an administrative afterthought. They sit there, they accumulate, and eventually someone decides what to do with them. Reduce employer contributions, pay plan expenses, maybe allocate them. Simple enough, right? Except it isn’t.

The issue isn’t what forfeitures are—it’s how they’re used and when. I’ve seen plans carry large forfeiture balances for years with no clear policy. I’ve seen inconsistent application from year to year. I’ve seen providers who don’t raise the issue at all unless the auditor does. That’s not administration—that’s negligence dressed up as routine.

From a fiduciary standpoint, inconsistency is where the trouble begins. If the plan document allows multiple uses, that doesn’t mean anything goes. There needs to be a process, a rationale, and documentation to support it. Otherwise, you’re opening the door to questions you don’t want to answer.

Good providers don’t wait for forfeitures to become a problem. They track them, they communicate about them, and they push plan sponsors to make decisions in real time—not three years later when the number gets uncomfortable.

It’s not a complicated issue. But like most problems in this space, it becomes complicated the moment you stop paying attention.

There’s a mindset in the 401(k) industry that if the phone isn’t ringing, everything must be fine. No complaints, no issues, no fires to put out—so why bother the client?

That thinking is exactly how providers lose business.

“No news is good news” doesn’t exist in this space. What actually exists is disengagement. When a plan sponsor stops reaching out, it doesn’t mean they’re happy. It usually means they’ve stopped expecting anything from you.

And once expectations drop, it’s only a matter of time before someone else steps in and raises them.

The providers who win understand that communication isn’t about responding—it’s about initiating. They’re not waiting for the annual review to talk about the plan. They’re checking in when something changes. They’re flagging issues before they become problems. They’re bringing ideas that make the sponsor feel like the plan is moving forward, not standing still.

The providers who lose are the ones who confuse stability with satisfaction. They think consistency is enough. It’s not. Consistency without engagement just feels like indifference.

What plan sponsors want isn’t constant noise—they want relevance. They want to know that someone is paying attention to their plan the same way they are. And when they don’t feel that, they start looking elsewhere, quietly.

By the time you realize there’s an issue, you’re already behind.

Because in this business, no news isn’t good news. It’s just the beginning of the end.

Most plan sponsors I talk to don’t think their 401(k) plan is broken. Contributions are going in, participants have investment options, and nobody is banging down the door with complaints. On the surface, everything looks fine.

That’s the problem.

“Fine” is the most dangerous word in this business. Fine means nobody is asking questions. Fine means the plan hasn’t been stress-tested. Fine means you’re assuming that because nothing has gone wrong yet, nothing will.

But retirement plans don’t usually fail in obvious ways. They underperform quietly. Fees may be reasonable, but not competitive. Investment menus may be adequate, but not optimized. Participant engagement may exist, but not in a way that actually changes outcomes. None of these issues show up as emergencies—but they matter over time.

The gap between a “fine” plan and a well-run plan isn’t cosmetic. It’s measurable. It’s the difference between participants retiring on track versus falling short. It’s the difference between a sponsor who is managing a fiduciary process versus one who is just maintaining a system.

And here’s the uncomfortable truth: most plans sit in that middle ground.

They’re not disasters. They’re just not as good as they could be.

The issue isn’t that sponsors don’t care. It’s that they rely too heavily on the assumption that their provider, advisor, or recordkeeper is handling everything. Sometimes they are. Sometimes they’re not. And unless you’re asking the right questions, you won’t know the difference.

A good plan doesn’t happen by accident. It requires attention, evaluation, and a willingness to challenge the status quo.

Because in the 401(k) world, the biggest risk isn’t having a bad plan.

It’s having a plan that looks good enough to avoid scrutiny.

Every year, the 401(k) Averages Book comes out and tells us something we already know—but somehow still manage to ignore.

Fees are going down.

That’s the headline everyone wants to celebrate. Investment costs continue to drop, recordkeeping is more competitive than ever, and overall plan expenses keep trending downward. On paper, it looks like progress. It looks like the system is working.

And to a certain extent, it is.

But then you get past the headline, and that’s where things get uncomfortable.

Because while fees are falling overall, the disparities between what plans actually pay are still staggering. You can line up two plans of similar size, similar demographics, even similar providers—and still see meaningful differences in cost. Not a few basis points here or there, but gaps that actually matter over time.

So the real question isn’t whether fees are improving.

It’s why the gap still exists at all.

This isn’t 2005. We’re not operating in the dark anymore. Fee disclosures exist. Benchmarking tools are everywhere. Advisors talk about fiduciary duty like it’s second nature. Litigation has made it painfully clear that excessive fees are not just a theoretical issue.

And yet, here we are.

The problem isn’t a lack of information. It’s a lack of urgency.

Plans stay where they are because things feel “fine.” Providers don’t push hard enough because stability is easier than change. Advisors sometimes accept the status quo because proving something better requires effort, and effort creates friction.

Meanwhile, participants quietly pay the price.

Because here’s the part that gets lost: averages don’t apply to individuals. Just because the industry average is going down doesn’t mean your plan is benefiting from it. Someone is still paying more than they should—and often they don’t even realize it.

That’s what the Averages Book really exposes.

Not just progress, but inconsistency. Not just improvement, but complacency.

And if you’re not actively questioning what you’re paying and why, there’s a very real chance you’re on the wrong side of that gap.

One of the most common things plan sponsors say is, “We don’t get any complaints about our 401(k).”

It sounds like a good thing. It’s not.

In most cases, no complaints doesn’t mean satisfaction. It means silence. And silence in a retirement plan is usually a sign of disengagement, not success.

Think about how participants interact with their 401(k). Most enroll once, pick a contribution rate—often too low—and then forget about it. They don’t review investments regularly. They don’t read notices. They don’t reach out with questions unless something goes wrong.

So of course there are no complaints. There’s very little interaction.

That doesn’t mean the plan is working the way it should.

A successful plan isn’t one that avoids complaints. It’s one that drives better outcomes. Are participants saving enough? Are they increasing contributions over time? Are they making informed investment decisions? Those are the questions that matter, and they’re not answered by silence.

In fact, a lack of feedback should make sponsors more curious, not less. If nobody is engaging with the plan, that’s an issue worth addressing. It may mean communication isn’t effective. It may mean the plan design isn’t encouraging better behavior. Or it may simply mean participants don’t feel connected to something that has a significant impact on their future.

Good sponsors don’t measure success by the absence of noise.

They measure it by the presence of progress.

Because in the 401(k) world, no complaints doesn’t mean everything is fine.

It usually means nobody is paying attention.

Every year, plan sponsors sit through the annual 401(k) review. There’s a deck. There are charts. Investment performance gets discussed. Fees get mentioned. Everyone nods, a few questions get asked, and then the meeting ends.

And nothing changes.

If that sounds familiar, your annual review isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do.

The purpose of a plan review isn’t to present information—it’s to make decisions. Yet most reviews are structured like a recap instead of a working session. You’re being told what already happened, not what needs to happen next.

It becomes an exercise in checking boxes. Yes, investments were reviewed. Yes, fees were discussed. Yes, fiduciary duty was acknowledged. But if no actual changes come out of the meeting, what did you really accomplish?

A meaningful review should feel a little uncomfortable. It should raise questions about whether your current provider is still the right fit. It should challenge whether your investment lineup still makes sense. It should force a discussion about participant outcomes—not just plan features.

If your review ends without at least one actionable decision, it wasn’t a review. It was a presentation.

Sponsors need to start treating these meetings differently. Ask harder questions. Push for comparisons, not just summaries. Demand recommendations, not just reporting. And most importantly, expect that something—anything—should improve as a result of the conversation.

Because the risk isn’t that you’re having annual reviews.

The risk is thinking that having them means you’re actually managing your plan.