Why CFOs care about employee retirement

Although they may keep your company’s purse strings knotted pretty tight, CFOs uniformly care, and deeply, about helping employees plan for retirement, particularly in light of proposed federal regulations within the past year.

In late 2010, the Department of Labor issued several regulations regarding disclosures of retirement-plan fees and investment-related information that will be effective, or are expected to be, by the beginning of next year. These rules bring new responsibilities to CFOs, either as plan fiduciaries or as representatives of plan sponsors, under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). With that being said, finance executives generally take their responsibilities as fiduciaries seriously — which isn’t surprising since they are already fiduciaries with respect to their duties to their shareholders — whether the company is public or private.