The Daily Brief for Benefits Professionals
BenefitsWire
Retirement Plans
September 30, 2026
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12 items · ~4 min read
In this issue
Regulatory Action and Guidance (4) · Litigation (2) · General Benefits (4) · Retirement Plans (2)
Regulatory Action and Guidance
4 items“Generally, the timing for adopting retirement plan amendments depends on whether the amendment is discretionary or required. For optional plan design changes, the amendment is generally due by the last day of the plan year in which the change is implemented.” MORE >>
Source: Ogletree Deakins
“September 16, 2026 Clarifying Deadlines for SECURE and SECURE 2.0 Required and Discretionary Plan Amendments Stakeholders have asked for clarification regarding whether plan amendments implementing SECURE and SECURE 2.0 provisions must be adopted by (1) the deadlines set forth in Notice 2024-2 (generally, December 31, 2026), or (2) the deadlines set forth in an applicable Required Amendments List (RA List). The answer depends on whether the plan amendment relates to a required amendment or a discretionary amendment. Required amendments As explained in Notice 2025-60 (the 2025 RA List), remedial amendment periods for required amendments are governed by sections 5.03(1)(b), 5.03(2)(b), and 6.0” MORE >>
Source: content.govdelivery.com
“The IRS issued draft regulations Tuesday that would allow the Secretary of the Treasury to automatically create an initial Trump Account, or 530A account, for eligible children without requiring a parent, guardian, or other adult to submit an enrollment election.” MORE >>
Source: PLANADVISER
The Treasury Department issued temporary regulations for Trump accounts, detailing initial setup, automatic enrollment, and qualified contributions, affecting account trustees, beneficiaries, and donors. MORE >>
Source: Federal Register
Litigation
2 items“A Massachusetts federal judge on Monday ruled that charges against AT&T Inc. should be dismissed from a proposed class action lawsuit challenging the company’s $8.05 billion pension risk transfer to Athene Annuity and Life Assurance Co. U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton followed the report and recommendation filed by Magistrate Judge Paul Levenson on August 31, which stated that charges against AT&T in the merged case Piercy et al. v. AT&T Inc. et al. should be dismissed on the grounds that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that AT&T was involved in the May 2023 selection of Athene as the annuity provider.” MORE >>
Source: PLANADVISER
“The ERISA Industry Committee and a coalition of business groups filed an amicus brief last week with the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, urging the court to uphold a district court’s dismissal of a lawsuit challenging AT&T’s use of forfeited 401(k) contributions to reduce future employer contributions to its retirement plan. The brief filed in Luis Hernandez v. AT&T Services Inc. et al. argues that the district court correctly rejected claims that AT&T violated the Employee Retirement Income Security Act by using forfeited employer contributions to offset future matching and other employer contributions.” MORE >>
Source: PLANADVISER
General Benefits
4 items[Legislation & Budget]
A Step Forward, But Will Standardized Forms Fix Retirement System Fragmentation?“By proposing standardized forms and a common rollover workflow, the agencies have acknowledged what participants, plan sponsors, and service providers have known for years: plan-to-plan retirement transfers remain unnecessarily difficult. The notice is responsive to provisions of the SECURE 2.0 Act, which tasked the Treasury to provide guidance “in the form of sample forms… to simplify, standardize, facilitate, and expedite the completion of rollovers to eligible retirement plans and trustee-to-trustee transfers from individual retirement plans.” It proposes four model forms and a five-step process designed to facilitate communication between distributing and receiving plans, while encouragi” MORE >>
Source: 401(k) Specialist
“In our previous installment, we examined how a comprehensive forensic audit quantifies program performance across seven core operational pillars to solve the health and welfare value equation.” MORE >>
Source: Employee Benefit News
“Experts from Groom Law Group and CAPTRUST answer questions concerning retirement plan administration and regulations.” MORE >>
Source: PLANSPONSOR
[Retirement Plans]
Trump Accounts to Auto-Enroll More Than 60 Million Children“Millions of children will be automatically enrolled in Trump Accounts starting as early as Thursday, Oct. 1, under new temporary rules issued Tuesday by the Treasury Department. The Treasury guidance projects a huge jump in participation in 2026 to more than 60 million additional children, and roughly two million accounts per year would be added in subsequent years. The massive auto enrollment will replace the previous structure that required parents or guardians to sign children up for the program. So far, 7 to 8 million American children have been signed up for Trump Accounts, and “we anticipate within a month we will have 70 million because we will go to auto-enroll,” Treasury Secretary S” MORE >>
Source: 401(k) Specialist
Retirement Plans
2 items[Litigation]
Private Equity Wants Your 401(k)—And Somebody Manufactured 12,000 “Grassroots” Comments to Help It Get There“On September 25, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders sent the Department of Labor a letter containing a question that should stop its proposed alternative-assets rule in its tracks: Who manufactured nearly 12,000 public comments supporting the effort to open workers’ 401(k) accounts to private equity, private credit, cryptocurrency and other alternative assets? The comments were supposed to demonstrate grassroots enthusiasm for putting Wall Street’s most opaque, illiquid and expensive products into ordinary retirement plans.” MORE >>
Source: The Commonsense 401(k) Project
“Looking at the participation rates of eligible employees across all small plans, Vanguard determined there was a 60% participation rate in the cohort, compared with an 83% participation rate among eligible employees in large plans. Automatic enrollment helped boost participation—to 79% for VRPA plans and 94% for large plans—but not as effectively as it does for larger plans, as only 26% of VRPA plans offered automatic enrollment, compared with 61% of large plans. Among engaged VRPA plan participants, Vanguard found their average saving rate of 7.5% was very close to the 7.6% rate of large-plan participants.” MORE >>
Source: PLANADVISER