SPARK Asks Labor for More Time on Fee Disclosure Compliance

WASHINGTON BUREAU — The SPARK Institute is asking the U.S. Labor Department to change a new retirement plan fee disclosure postponement proposal and give retirement plans more time to comply.

The Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), an arm of the Labor Department, recently announced that it is pushing the compliance date for plan-level disclosure rules back to Jan. 1, 2012, from July 16, 2011.

The SPARK Institute, Simsbury, Conn. – a group for large retirement plan service providers and investment managers – believes complying with the widely anticipated final 408(b)(2) rules may take a significant amount of time and effort to implement, according to Larry Goldbrum, the group’s general counsel.

“Without knowing what will be in the final rules, service providers cannot determine the amount of time and effort that will be needed to make changes to their systems, materials, policies and procedures,” Goldbrum writes in a comment letter.

The PPA

Drafters of the disclosure rules, which were first proposed in July 2010, want to ensure that retirement plan service providers give plan sponsors and plan fiduciaries information they can use to determine whether plan service compensation amounts are reasonable and whether the providers have conflicts of interest.

EBSA also has drafted separate rules for disclosures by plan sponsors to plan participants, eligible non-participants and plan beneficiaries.

The Labor Department has not yet adopted final disclosure rules.

The Labor Department has been working on the fee disclosure regulations to implement provisions of the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA).