EBSA Fact Sheet: Final Rule to Increase Workers' Access to High Quality Investment Advice
"The final rule will become effective on December 27, 2011, and will be applicable to transactions occurring on or after that date." (U.S. Employee Benefits Security Administration)

Financial Literacy Program Yields Encouraging Results for Retirement Plan Participants
"Employers may find new success in influencing employees to make smarter financial decisions. Last week, a program that reaches employees through an employer-based education program announced the results of Investor Education in Your Workplace, and they were hopeful." (Employee Benefit News; free registration required)

How Safe Is Your 401(k) Plan?
"Because qualified retirement plans—pension, profit-sharing, and more recently 401(k)—have been around a long time and often hold large amounts of money, history shows that too often they have been the target of abuse or neglect. So it is important to know they are now the most heavily regulated and closely protected assets under the law." (Journal Sentinel Inc.)

401(k) Participants Who Stuck with Equities Saw Balances Grow
"For 401(k) investors who kept with their equity allocation and continued to contribute to their plan as the financial markets went into free-fall in late 2008, their average account balance grew by 64% in the period from Oct. 1, 2008, through June 30, 2011, according to a Fidelity Investments study . . . ." (MarketWatch, Inc.)

Impressions of the Concerns over DOL's Proposed New Fiduciary Definition
"One ought not be too surprised, I suppose, at those lobbying so fiercely to preserve the status quo. For good or ill, this industry has grown up around the so-called five-part test for an ERISA fiduciary. Entire business practices and means of conducting business have been constructed with an eye toward avoiding becoming ensnared in ERISA's web." (PLANSPONSOR.COM)

Retirement Security and the Financial and Economic Crisis: An Overview
"At a recent Impact Conference . . . academics, practitioners, and policy analysts joined to explore how retirement planning and long-term financial security have changed, following the crisis." (Pension Research Council: free registration required to download fulltext of articles)

What Every Qualified Sponsor Should Know about Fee Disclosure (PDF)
"The new disclosures require vendors to focus on compensation paid to them, both direct and indirect. It is possible that the information will overwhelm fiduciaries, and even disturb them and their plans' participants." (Thomson Reuters via Roland|Criss)