Posted: 7/10/08

Jennifer Eller and Rebecca Oldroyd contributed the article, "U.S. Pension Regulator Moves to Impose New Fee Disclosure Rules for Employee Benefit Plans and Service Providers," to the March 2008 issue of the IPEBLA Journal.

Recently, national attention in the U.S. has focused on compensation and fees received by companies providing services to employee benefit plans.  Litigation over the reasonableness of service provider fees and compensation has increased dramatically and several bills addressing plan fee reporting and disclosure requirements have been proposed in the U.S. Congress.

The U.S. Department of Labor ("DOL") has also undertaken major regulatory initiatives to increase disclosure of service provider compensation and relationships. The DOL recently published final changes to the annual information return required for employee benefit plans regulated under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act ("ERISA"), known as the "Form 5500", filed annually by plan administrators with the DOL and the Internal Revenue Service. The final regulations made major revisions to reporting required on Schedule C of the Form 5500, which is the schedule that requires plan administrators to report compensation paid to plan service providers.

Please find the full article attached.