Recent News

November 2011 - Blue Chip Retirement Plans, Inc. welcomes Jacquelyn Cooper as a Compliance Consultant. Jackie brings with her over 15 years experience in corporate retirement plan administration, including employment with Administrative Management Group, American Express Tax and Business Services and Lincoln Financial Group. Welcome to our team Jackie!

 Fee Disclosure

In July 2010, the Department of Labor (DOL) published an Interim Final Rule on disclosures that certain plan service providers, called "Covered Service Providers (CSPs)" must make to hiring fiduciaries in Covered Plans about their fees and services. That rule was scheduled to go into efect on April 1, 2012. The DOL published a Final Rule and moved the effective date from April 1, 2012 to July 1, 2012. The following are highlights of some changes in the Final Rule:
 

• Certain frozen 403(b) plans are ecluded from the definition of a Covered Plan.
• When disclosing Indirect Compensation (generally compensation paid from plan investments or another service provider), a description of the arrangement pursuant to which the compensation is paid must be included.
• The rules for disclosure of investment related compensation on designated investtment alternatives wewre better synchronized with the requirements of the participant disclosure rule, which will be effective later this year. Fund expense ratios must be expressed as a percentage calculated in accordance with the participant disclosure rule, and any other information needed for participant disclosure that is in the control of, or reasonably available to, the CSP must be included in the CSP's disclosure.
• The effective dates for the participant disclosure rule have been pushed back 60 days, so for a calendar year plan the initial disclosure is now due by August 30, 2012, and the first quarterly disclosre is due by November 14, 2012.
• The deadline for disclosing changes to investment related information has been changed from 60 days to at least annually.
• Inadvertent errors in the disclosure of any changes to the initial disclosure can take advantage of the same 30 day correction rule that applies to initial disclosre errors.
• The deadline for providing information that a plan sponsor requests in order to comply with ERISA reporting or disclosure obligation has been changed from 30 days to a date reasonably in advance to the date the plan administrator must comply with the reporting or disclosure obligation.