5/19/2015 – Supreme Court: Employers must monitor 401(k) plans (NPR Marketplace)

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that employers have an ongoing obligation to monitor the 401(k) plans they offer their workers. The court also established a more flexible reading of the statute of limitations on when employees can sue should they believe their employer failed to uphold its responsibilities. The case, Tibble v. Edison, originated as a dispute between current and former workers for Edison, a public utility company in California. The workers argued that the retirement plan included several retail-class mutual funds with high fees when the company, as an institutional investor, could have invested in nearly identical plans with lower fees. “The reason fees matter is that over time the power of compounding is very significant. That can make the difference between a retirement that is comfortable and one that is not,” says Marcia Wagner, principal at The Wagner Law Group.

Read the full article at NPR’s Marketplace.