The U.S. Department of Labor has proactively shifted its enforcement resources in recent years from the sponsors of plans covered by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act to the financial institutions that provide services to ERISA plans. This has allowed the agency to conduct investigations involving hundreds or thousands of plans at once rather than investigating individual plan sponsors.
The DOL originally targeted fiduciary providers, such as investment advisers, investment managers and trustees. But the agency has devoted more time and resources toward nonfiduciary providers such as record-keepers.
Given this shift, it is important to know both what to expect when the DOL decides to investigate and how to respond.
In this Groom Investigations & Enforcement article in Law360, Michael Kreps, George Sepsakos, Levine Thomas, and Arsalan Malik provide a roadmap for service providers following the DOL’s shift from targeting plan sponsors and fiduciary providers to service providers and nonfiduciary providers in their investigations.
To read the article, click here.
