How your CPA can help you navigate the new DOL Fiduciary Rule

Overview

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Plan sponsors, as a whole, are unaware that participants pay disparate fees, and service providers, particularly record-keepers that receive revenue-sharing payments, are not going to address it, experts say. It is incumbent on sponsors, then, to ask their plan advisers and record-keepers about fee levelization.

January 14th, 2016-PlanSponsor

Key reasons for the CPA to take an advocacy role:

The tax professional is in a unique role as a trusted advisor to a business owner. The broker or advisor to a retirement plan has no incentive to review their own fees. Certainly, the recordkeeper or 401k platform provider is not going to raise the issue of their own fees with the business owner. Uniquely, the CPA, EA, or plan auditor is. Understanding the key points made in the DOL is an imperative for the tax professional that advises business owners. The DOL makes two main points:

•Plans are paying excessive fees.

•Plan sponsors need a mechanism to identify and deal with conflicts of interest.

Addressing plan liability from the fiduciary perspective

1. Exposing significant cost savings

2. Plan review compensation arrangements

3. Plan sponsors will need a mechanism for identifying and detecting conflicts of interest.

4. Increased liability for insurance or Broker Dealer sold plans.

5. Aimed at stopping $17b/y investors waste in excess fees.