Employers who sponsor worker retirement plans just got a lot more time before they have to issue plan participants 401(k) fee disclosures.
The new deadline: Aug. 31, 2012. That is the date by which plan sponsors must disclose all 401(k) plan fees and expenses to plan participants. The participant fee disclosure rule had previously been pushed back to May 31.
The reason for the further postponement? The Department of Labor (DOL) is pushing back the date retirement service providers (like Fidelity Investments and Vanguard) have to disclose their fees to employers who sponsor plans.
Final disclosure rules issued — finally
In the long-awaited final version of its 401(k) plan fee disclosure rules, the DOL announced retirement service providers now have until July 1 to spell out the direct and indirect compensation their administrators receive, as well as any possible conflicts of interest, to their plan sponsor clients.
The DOL had previously pushed back the retirement service disclosure deadline to April 1. But after members of the retirement service industry complained the April 1 deadline didn’t leave enough time for service providers to comply, the DOL decided to push back the compliance deadline one last time.
Plan sponsors now have at least 60 days (ending Aug. 31) after receiving cost info from their retirement service providers to create and distribute plan fee disclosure documents to workers saving within the plans.
