Art of the Qualified Plan Audit

Posted by Saaib Uppal In my blog post titled Mind Watching My Stuff for a Minute? I went over how to go about finding a participant who is unresponsive to communications from the plan fiduciary. As I mentioned, to terminate a plan, a sponsor must distribute all account balances. But, what if the plan sponsor seems to be searching … Continued

Posted by Michelle J. Cross, CPA A court recently fined a plan sponsor over $35 million for breach of fiduciary trust by causing employees to pay excessive fees in their 401(k) accounts. You may be thinking to yourself, “Wow, they must have been stealing from the plan!” They weren’t. But they did do something wrong…they … Continued

Posted by Saaib Uppal Any Seinfeld fan out there would remember an episode in which a tourist asked George Costanza to watch over his bag for a minute. George agreed and then stood there as the man disappeared. Unable to wait because the man was taking a long time to return, George decided to just … Continued

Posted by Saaib Uppal and Stacey Snyder Disclaimer: All blog posts are valid as of the date published. As the common adage goes, “A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.” With discussions across the country focusing on the discrepancies in wealth, we thought now is a better time than ever to remind … Continued

Posted by Maria T. Hurd, CPA Since the Department of Labor’s final 408(b)(2) and 404(a)(5) fee disclosure regulations were issued, industry experts across all fields have been wanting to know what will be the extent of the auditors’ duty to obtain verification for each plan’s compliance with these new rules. On Thursday, April 12, 2012, … Continued

Posted by Saaib Uppal Don’t you love those days when you wake up before your alarm clock only to see you can go back to sleep for another hour, or when your boss decides to push a deadline back on a project, or the moment you found out that the employee benefit plan you administer requires a limited scope … Continued

Posted by Maria T. Hurd, CPA Disclaimer: All blog posts are valid as of the date published. As stated in our previous blog It Takes a Village, plan sponsors use many specialized service providers to successfully administer and account for all the financial activity in their plans. Independent third-party specialists can include payroll companies, third … Continued

Posted by Maria T. Hurd, CPA As published in the CPA Success article titled Employee Benefit Plan Audits Still Don’t Make the Grade, the Department of Labor’s Chief Accountant Ian Dingwall has stated that plan audits continue to show a 30 percent deficiency rate. Specifically, he enumerated problems including lack of documentation, inadequate testing of hard-to-value … Continued

Posted by Chris Ciminera Benjamin Franklin once said, “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” Another certainty that comes to mind is change, specifically, changes to the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) Accounting Standards. Every year, accountants’ inboxes are inundated with various Accounting Standards Updates (or ASUs for … Continued

Posted by Maria T. Hurd, CPA Much like the African proverb that has been in existence for centuries: “It takes a village to raise a child”, the success of a retirement plan’s administration cannot be attributed to a single person or company. Often, third party administrators tell their clients that they will give the auditors … Continued