Legal

The world’s largest asset manager, with more than $10 trillion in assets under management, has dropped out of the Net Zero Asset Managers initiative, following the recent withdrawals of Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and other megabanks.

State securities regulators discovered gaps in the firm’s supervisory process, when customers moved from brokerage to advisory accounts and the financial services firm implemented new policies in response to the now-defunct fiduciary rule.

Participants in the firm’s $2.9 billion 401(k) plan had sued the company, alleging it failed to regularly monitor plan investments and remove underperforming in-house funds.

Ex-employees are suing Verizon as well as State Street Global Advisors, which served as the “independent fiduciary” in putting the deal together to manage the pensions of 56,000 retirees.

The online retailer has been hit with a class action lawsuit, alleging it violated its ERISA fiduciary duties by using forfeited 401(k) funds to offset the company's own contributions instead of reducing administrative fees for over 20,000 participants.

Last week, Congress passed the Social Security Fairness Act, a bill that has been decades in the making, and President Biden will sign it into law on Monday.

The high cost of health care drove the vast majority of strategies in the benefits space, as pharmacy benefit managers found themselves in the headlines far too often this year, as the high costs of drugs (and weight loss drugs, in particular) were a hot topic.

Seattle-based Weyerhaeuser Company employees filed a class action lawsuit over the transfer of plan assets to Athene Annuity & Life Assurance, alleging a breach of fiduciary duty, according to law firm Schlichter Bogard.