The Daily Brief for Benefits Professionals
BenefitsWire
Retirement Plans
August 31, 2026
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11 items · ~4 min read
In this issue
Regulatory Action and Guidance (4) · Retirement Plans (3) · Litigation (2) · General Benefits (2)
Regulatory Action and Guidance
4 items“The agency raised rates that pension plans and multiemployer plans use for valuation and funding purposes.” MORE >>
Source: PLANSPONSOR
“The Notice introduces a five-step process and sample forms designed to (1) protect participants’ personal identifying information; (2) require coordination and communication between plans to minimize participants’ burden; (3) use common terms throughout the process; (4) require plans to ensure the rollover request is legitimate and that the information provided is accurate; and (5) rely on electronic (rather than paper) transactions to the maximum extent possible. This five-step process applies to direct rollovers between qualified plans, 403(b) plans, governmental 457(b) plans, traditional IRAs, SEPs and SIMPLE IRAs. It does not apply to IRA-to-IRA transfers.” MORE >>
Source: Groom Law Group
“The IRS issued proposed regulations that would revise long-standing rules governing the determination of target normal cost and funding targets for single-employer defined benefit pension plans. The proposal would update regulations first finalized in 2009 to reflect subsequent legislative changes and clarify how plan sponsors may account for certain plan adoptions, benefit increases, funding assumptions, and plan expenses when calculating minimum funding requirements. According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the IRS, the proposed regulations primarily update Code Section 430 funding rules to reflect amendments enacted through the Worker, Retiree, and Employer Recovery Act of 200” MORE >>
Source: bakertilly.com
[General Benefits]
New DOL Guidance on ESOPs | News | Haynes Boone“In January 2026, the Employee Benefits Security Administration (“EBSA”) in the Department of Labor (“DOL”) revised its enforcement priorities to no longer include ESOPs as part of its national enforcement projects.” MORE >>
Source: haynesboone.com
Retirement Plans
3 items“Managed account use is generally associated with higher employee contribution rates and a higher probability of contributing enough to receive the full employer match, suggests new research by Morningstar — but the relationship is not necessarily uniform.” MORE >>
Source: Milliman
“Research shows almost 80% of under-35 investors are in single TDF holdings, though more diversity is needed for older, higher-balance participants The rise of the target-date fund as the predominant QDIA in retirement plans shows few signs of waning, though the applicability of TDFs is not universal—especially for participants approaching retirement themselves.” MORE >>
Source: 401(k) Specialist
“Pooled-employer plans (PEP) have grown quickly in popularity, according to an industry webinar. However, sponsors still have fiduciary duties related to selecting and monitoring a pooled plan provider (PPP), and additional policy reforms will be needed for PEPs to reach their full potential.” MORE >>
Source: American Retirement Association
Litigation
2 items“The issue is bigger than Bitcoin. If courts and regulators treat brokerage windows too loosely, they could become the back door through which crypto, private equity, private credit and other high-fee alternative investments enter ERISA plans—with substantially less fiduciary scrutiny than they would receive if they appeared directly on the plan’s investment menu. And there is another issue that should concern every 401(k) fiduciary: Who is paying the brokerage-window provider to make these investments available? That question goes directly to conflicts of interest and potentially to ERISA’s prohibited-transaction rules.” MORE >>
Source: The Commonsense 401(k) Project
“Last week, a unanimous Eleventh Circuit panel vacated DOT’s decision to terminate approval of the airlines’ antitrust-immunized partnership, finding that the agency failed to adequately explain its departure from longstanding practices. The ruling leaves intact a joint venture covering the largest international air travel market for the United States and provides a noteworthy rebuke to the DOT’s decision-making process. The opinion closely tracked themes that Scalia pressed during oral argument, particularly his contention that DOT abandoned its traditional practice of evaluating airline joint ventures across broader country-pair and city-pair markets and instead focused narrowly on competit” MORE >>
Source: Gibson Dunn
General Benefits
2 items“Public pensions have reached their strongest fiscal sustainability position in more than 20 years as they continue to make significant progress towards aligning long-term pension obligations with the economies that support them. NCPERS’ new research shows that in 2018, 45 states had pension liabilities growing faster than their economies. Today, that number has fallen to just two. The report, Measuring the Fiscal Sustainability of Public Pensions, builds on NCPERS’ sustainability valuation framework, introduced in 2022 as a complement to traditional pension funding measures.” MORE >>
Source: NCPERS
“A new “WatchBlog” post by a Government Accountability Office (GAO) official revisits recommendations from a report issued earlier this year that the Secretary of Labor should provide additional guidance for retirement plan sponsors and service providers concerning participant data privacy. The blog post by Kris Nguyen, Director of Education, Workforce and Income Security at GAO, explains that the Department of Labor (DOL) issued cybersecurity guidance in 2021 on retirement plans’ use of participant data, but didn’t specify what participant information should be considered private. She did note that the 2021 guidance says that plan sponsors should “clearly address” service providers’ obligati” MORE >>
Source: American Retirement Association
Also of Note
- Total Portfolio Approach and Strategic Asset Allocation: Governance, Trade-Offs, and Considerations — “The Total Portfolio Approach (TPA) represents a meaningful evolution — shifting emphasis from static asset buckets to a more flexible, opportunity-driven framework seeking to align capital allocation with total portfolio outcomes.” (NCPERS)