When participants assume alignment without verification, problems remain hidden until they are too large to ignore. Misalignment doesn’t announce itself—it compounds quietly, year after year.
The calendar flipped to 2026, and with it came a fresh crop of 401k new year opportunities. Will this be the year 403(b) plans finally shed legacy costs, SECURE 2.0 provisions hit their stride, and markets remind participants that risk never really sleeps?
Viewed through that lens, a 401k Christmas wish list isn’t just about outcomes, but about predictability. A stable rulebook can make it easier to design, monitor, and maintain plans that work in practice as well as on paper.
Such hesitation shifts the spotlight back to fiduciary fundamentals. New rules may widen the menu, but ERISA doesn’t relax the obligation to fully understand and monitor what’s offered.
So, reams of respondents spilled their guts: compliance is king, tech’s your knight, and referrals rule revenue (which make them your queen, but who plays the pawn in this game of fiduciary chess?).
2024 was a year of adaptation for retirement plan fiduciaries who navigated through regulatory changes, legal landscapes, and participant needs with a renewed focus on governance, liability management, and the holistic management of retirement plans.
In a strange twist of fate, it appears the newsweekly publication business model was closer to retirement in 2009 than the 401k.
It seems like each decade produces a major box office hit that exudes fiduciary. This whole “best interest” thing seems to have caught on in Tinseltown. More recent movies have added a good dose of the “honesty” part of fiduciary.
Worse, if the “alternatives” alluded to by the paper entail government backed programs like Social Security, this could have a debilitating impact on encouraging people to be responsible for funding their own retirement.
What The $955 Retirement Savings Headline Gets Wrong (And Why Fiduciaries Should Care)
The $955 retirement savings headline sparked national alarm, but fiduciaries must look beyond shock value to understand what the data truly reveals and how to respond.