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- Five Landmark Decisions That Shaped, and Continue to Shape, Fiduciary Prudence Under ERISA
- Seniors’ Anti-Financial Exploitation (SAFE) Act of 2026
- Quantifying Fiduciary Prudence: Creating a Win-Win ERISA Fiduciary Prudent Process by Integrating The Fiduciary Prudence Trinity With AI and the AMVR and TWBVI Metrics
- Quantifying Fiduciary Prudence: In-Plan Annuities, Terminal Wealth, and the Terminal Wealth Breakeven Value Index
- Terminal Wealth As a Fiduciary Prudence Metric: Why ERISA Plan Fiduciaries Should Incorporate Wealth Preservation and Capital Preservation into the Evaluation of In-Plan Annuities and Alternative Investments
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Tag Archives: retirement plans
Five Landmark Decisions That Shaped, and Continue to Shape, Fiduciary Prudence Under ERISA
James W. Watkins, III, J.D., CFP EmeritusTM, AWMA®InvestSense, LLC Mathematics is the light that reveals the nature of things.”- Justice Louis Brandeis Executive overview The modern concept of fiduciary prudence under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) … Continue reading
Posted in fiduciary compliance
Tagged 404c compliance, compliance, ERISA, fiduciary, fiduciary investing, fiduciary law, retirement plans
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Quantifying Fiduciary Prudence: Creating a Win-Win ERISA Fiduciary Prudent Process by Integrating The Fiduciary Prudence Trinity With AI and the AMVR and TWBVI Metrics
James W. Watkins, III, J.D., CFP EmeritusTM, AWMA®InvestSense, LLC ERISA § 404(a)(1)(B)1, imposes upon plan fiduciaries a demanding but deliberately flexible standard: fiduciaries must act “with the care, skill, prudence, and diligence” that a prudent fiduciary acting in a like … Continue reading
A Call for Senate Oversight Hearings: The Systemic Risk to Plan Sponsors and Plan Participants Created by the EBSA’s Expansive and Legally Unsupported Extrapolations of ERISA Fiduciary Principles
James W. Watkins, III, J.D., CFP EmeritusTM, AWMA®InvestSense, LLC Employee Benefits Security Administration (“EBSA”) may not transform generally accepted fiduciary concepts into categorical legal mandates untethered from statutory text, judicial precedent, or established trust-law principles. This appeal presents a fundamental … Continue reading
DOL/EBSA Field Assistance Bulletin 2026-01 Is Not Entitled to Judicial Deference Under The Loper Bright Decision
James W. Watkins, III, J.D., CFP EmeritusTM, AWMA®InvestSense, LLC In DOL/EBSA Field Assitance Bulletin 2026-01 (FAB 2026-01), the Department of Labor states its belief that its proposed legislation is entitled to legal deference. Nothing could be further from the truth. … Continue reading
Terminal Wealth: The True Fiduciary Prudence Paradigm with Regard to the In-Plan Annuity Scam
James W. Watkins, III, J.D., CFP EmeritusTM, AWMA®InvestSense, LLC A sound evaluation of fiduciary prudence must ultimately be anchored in outcomes, not just process—and in the context of long-term financial decision-making, the most meaningful outcome is terminal wealth. Fiduciaries are … Continue reading
Is the DOL/EBSA Trying to Serve Two Masters? ERISA Section 404(a)’s Independent Investigation and Evaluation Requirements and the DOL/EBSA Proposed Rule on Alternative Investments
Is the DOL and EBSA trying to Serve Two Masters? The DOL’s proposed rule for alyternative investments suggests the answer is “yes,” given the known lack of transparency associaes with such products. Worse yet, it has been suggested that alternative … Continue reading
Posted in fiduciary compliance
Tagged 401k, ERISA, fiduciary law, fiduciary liability, fiduciarylitigation, plansponsor, retirement plans
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Much Ado About Nothing?: The DOL’s New Alternative Investment Rule vs. the Administrative Procedure Act
James W. Watkins, III, J.D., CFP EmeritusTM, AWMA®InvestSense, LLC When the DOL announced the relases of its new alternative investments rule, we quickly advised out fiduciary risk minimization clients to simply ignore it, as it failed our basic two-step fiduciary … Continue reading
Posted in fiduciary compliance
Tagged 401k, EBSA, ERISA, ERISA litigation Congress, fiduciary law, history, news, plan sponsors, retirement plans, Supreme Court
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Battle of the Best Interests – Whose Are the EBSA and the DOL Supposed to Serve, and Whose Are They Really Serving?
ThesisThe Employee Benefit Security Administration’s (EBSA) recent shift to interpreting ERISA in terms of procedural prudence to the exclusion of substantive trust law is inconsistent with the stated purpopse and goals of ERISA, as revealed in the Act’s legislative history, … Continue reading
Posted in fiduciary compliance, fiduciary duty, fiduciary prudence, fiduciary prudence, fiduciary law, fiduciary liability, ERISA, fiduciary litigation
Tagged 401k, ERISA, ERISA litigation, fiduciary, fiduciary investing, fiduciary law, fiduciary liability, Fiduciary litigation, plan sponsor, retirement plans
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Guest Article On Supreme Court’s Decision to Hear the Intel Case
Several years ago, Chris Tobe, Risk Ferri, and I founded the “The CommonSense 401k Project” web site. The” Project” was created as a means of providing information on fiduciary law and compliance, specifically with regard to ERISA, the primary law … Continue reading
Fair Dinkum: A Critique of the EBSA’s Amicus Brief in Pizarro v. Home Depot
James W. Watkins, III, J.D., CFP EmeritusTM, AWMA® THESIS THE BURDEN OF PROOF ON CAUSATION PROPERLY RESTS WITH THE FIDUCIARY DUE TO ERISA’S REMEDIAL PURPOSE AND STRUCTURAL INFORMATION ASYMMETRY I. ERISA’s Remedial Purpose Requires Burden Allocation That Enables, Not Defeats, … Continue reading
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