Employers should be about as careful when setting up the new retirement plan investment advice programs as they are when running advice programs not affected by the new federal advice laws.
Robert Doyle, a director in the Employee Benefits Security Administration, gives that assessment in Field Assistance Bulletin Number 2007-01, which describes how EBSA will interpret the retirement plan investment provisions of the Pension Protection Act of 2006.
The PPA encourages plan sponsors to offer plan participants access to investment advice through "eligible investment advice arrangements." Advisors in the arrangements can charge for the advice they give to retirement plan participants as long as the fees do not depend on the investment options selected. Advisors may even be able to charge fees that depend on the options selected, if a computer model that meets standards that are still under development chooses the investments.
Before the PPA came along, employers could offer investment advice to plan participants, but the rules for advisor compensation were unclear.
Today, when using an eligible investment advice arrangement, "plan fiduciaries have a duty to prudently select and periodically monitor the advisory program," Doyle writes.
But "fiduciaries have no duty to monitor the specific investment advice given by the fiduciary adviser to any particular recipient of advice," Doyle writes.
