"Improving the Health of Your Company's Employee Benefits Plan," hosted by Venable

Update: This event has already occurred. Please click here for an audio recording of the program, or click here for presentation slides.

Venable's Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation Group presented on how to take your company’s retirement and health plans to the next level of legal fitness.

Topics included:

Fiduciary Wellness

• There are an alarming number of recent 401(k) and 403(b) investment and fee-related lawsuits. The presentation discussed the state of the law and fiduciary best practices and examined the Department of Labor's final fiduciary rule issued earlier this year. The fiduciary rule has a significant impact on plan advisers, financial institutions, and services providers but impacts plan sponsors too. Action items for plan sponsors to be aware of in the administration of retirement plans subject to ERISA were also explored.

Financial Wellness

• Financial wellness programs are designed to offer workers security in retirement and to reduce financial stress in employee’s day-to-day lives over expenses like college education for their children. The presentation addressed ways to help employers navigate some of the hidden pitfalls and risk in financial wellness programs while providing investment education and other tools to employees.

Health and Wellness Programs

• The landscape of regulations that apply to wellness programs became more crowded this year. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently issued final rules under the ADA and GINA. The new rules impose significant new requirements on employer wellness programs—those that operate in conjunction with a health plan, and those that are independent of any health plan. The new rules themselves were discussed and how they interact with the HIPAA rules that have long applied to wellness programs. A summary of the requirements for a legally-compliant wellness program were also discussed.  

Speakers:
Harry I. Atlas, Partner
Juliana Reno, Partner
Thora Johnson, Partner
Lisa Tavares, Partner