Legal

The IBM lawsuit caught the attention of Labor Department, which claims the three-year deadline to bring a fiduciary claim doesn't apply because workers didn't have "actual knowledge" of the ERISA violation.

It's critical that employers and their benefits advisors take the fiduciary standards learned from retirement plans and apply them to their health plans.

Recently, numerous class action 401(k) lawsuits have been filed by participants over misuse of forfeited assets from former employees, including Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Nordstrom.

Companies need to fully understand what the plan fees are so they can be "fully transparent" with their workers, said law firm Schlichter Bogard, which is representing plaintiffs suing TIAA for steering them into high-fee investments.

The firm mismanages its $3.4 billion 401(k) plan by overpaying for administrative services and using money forfeited by former employees, the class action lawsuit alleges.

Ameriprise, Edward Jones and other big names in wealth management have agreed to pay hefty fines, after a years-long sweep of 26 firms for "widespread and longstanding failures" to preserve electronic communications.

BofA employees filed a lawsuit last week, alleging that the company mismanaged its 401(k) plan by using assets forfeited by former workers for its own financial benefit, in yet another fiduciary forfeiture lawsuit.

A preliminary injunction, granted Thursday by a federal judge, puts the implementation of the Labor Department's controversial new Retirement Security Rule, set to take effect September 23, on hold until further order of the court.