Retirement Plan News: DOL Recap Q1 2015

DOL UPDATE

New Participant Fee Disclosure Timing Relief

Under the DOL’s fee transparency regulations, plan administrators must provide a disclosure of plan and investment information, including an investment comparative chart, to eligible employees and beneficiaries once every 12 months. The original disclosures were due by August 30, 2012, and each annual disclosure thereafter would be due within 12 months of the last delivery date. The DOL has acknowledged that the fee disclosure timing does not allow plan administrators to coordinate fee disclosure delivery with other participant notices, which could cause confusion for participants.

To address these concerns, the DOL has drafted regulations that, reportedly, would add a 30-45 day window to the annual deadline to deliver participant fee disclosures to enable plans to coordinate the delivery of the fee disclosure with other participant notices. These regulations have not yet been released to the public for comment, but the DOL has submitted them in final form to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for approval. The OMB has up to 90 days to review regulations. Because this review timeline expires in April 2015, and these were submitted as final regulations, the timing relief will likely be effective for this year’s disclosures.