A recent court case provides some potentially valuable guidance into ways plan fiduciaries can approach fiduciary litigation. Most importantly, the case could force plaintiffs to focus on truly comparable situations in alleging that a plan’s actions were imprudent--this would limit plaintiffs’ ability to use, as benchmarks of prudent behavior, general industry data or different categories of investments (such as comparing index funds to actively managed funds).

Notice 2018-95, issued by the IRs in December, provides very specific and targeted relief for retirement plans under Code Section 403(b). who failed to properly administer certain 403(b) eligibility rules. However, equally valuable to 403(b) sponsors, is the clarification contained in the Notice on how these eligibility rules are supposed to be administered.