Examining the impact of Obama’s plans by Kathleen Pender, San Francisco Chronicle, Tuesday, January 26, 2010.

The White House on Monday previewed several middle-class tax cuts and spending programs that President Obama will propose in Wednesday’s State of the Union address.

Proposals include:

• Improve 401(k) plans by requiring better fee disclosure, encouraging employers to make unbiased investment advice available to workers, promoting annuities and other forms of guaranteed lifetime income and requiring better disclosure of target-date funds.

SCLC principal Jon Chambers appears in San Francisco’s KTVU Channel 2 May 18, 2009 special report on the state of 401(k) plans. The segment is reported by KTVU’s Consumer Editor, Tom Vacar.

While many mainstream media sources have been reporting on problems with 401(k)’s and the limited retirement savings opportunities available to American workers, SCLC doesn’t believe the news is all bad. Consequently, we were pleased to be involved to help communicate some of the good news.

Here is link to the full video report (you need to wait a few seconds for the video to load, and there is a brief commercial before the report plays).

An article in the October 2008 edition of Trusts & Estates Magazine (“The Journal of Wealth Management for Estate Planning Professionals”) includes a ranking of the 100 largest U.S. Registered Investment Advisory firms by Assets under Management. SCLC ranked 47th.

Here’s the article: Asset-gathering Machines (subscription required)

_{Reproduced with permission from Daily Report for Executives, No. 27 (Feb. 11, 2008), p. C-1.
Copyright 2008 by The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. (800-372-1033)}

Labor Department Effort to Enhance Plan Fees Disclosure Draws Mixed Response

Plan providers and sponsors generally are happy with the Labor Department’s fee disclosure guidance, while those who represent participants see a need for more work, according to interviews conducted by BNA during December and January.

In response to cries that tax code Section 401(k) plan sponsors were neither asking for nor getting the fee disclosure they needed, the Labor Department issued final regulations covering reporting requirements under Schedule C of the Form 5500 (221 PBD, 11/16/07; 34 BPR 2702, 11/20/07), and proposed regulations under Employee Retirement Income Security Act Section 408(b)(2)’s prohibited transaction exemption (238 PBD, 12/13/07; 34 BPR 2925, 12/18/07). The department also intends to issue new rules governing direct disclosure to participants.

Employers not liable for 401(k) losses in target account by Kathleen Pender, San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday, October 28, 2007.

The U.S. Labor Department last week issued final rules designed to get more employees participating and investing more aggressively in their 401(k) plans.

The new rules say that employers can’t be held liable for losses in a 401(k) account if they enroll employees who don’t sign up themselves and direct their contributions into one of three qualified default options: target-date funds, balanced funds and managed accounts.

Jon Chambers is quoted in an article on how to plan your Year-end income tax strategies by Kathleen Pender, San Francisco Chronicle, November 28, 2006.

As the end of 2006 approaches, here are some tax- and money-saving moves to consider before Dec. 31.

• Pump up your 401(k).

• Think twice before buying a stock fund in a taxable account.

• Think twice before buying a stock fund in a taxable account.

• Maximize tax losses.

• Give a gift.

Dow dives on ho-hum earnings, oil worries by Carolyn Said, San Francisco Chronicle, Saturday, January 21, 2006.

Jon Chambers, principal at investment-consulting firm Schultz Collins Lawson Chambers in San Francisco, said investors shouldn’t fret over Friday’s one-day drop.

“The market will balance itself out. We’ll have bad days and good days,” he said. In fact, Chambers said, bad days are simply the price investors pay for potentially bigger payoffs in the long run.

“A day like today reminds us why we expect 10 percent (returns over time) from the stock market,” he said. “If you didn’t have greater risk, you wouldn’t have greater reward. You do better in stocks than in a money market or a bond because you have the risk of bad days, bad months or bad years. If you were never to have a bad day, month or year, and all you could expect would be a risk-free rate of return, then you’d get the same (low) return as a money market.”

From Advisers selling DC plans must improve fee disclosure (subsciption required) by Rick Miller on November 1, 2004:

However, there are those who believe that the majority of brokers who sell plans for a commission—and don’t consider themselves fiduciaries—are not always being straightforward about their compensation.

“In my opinion, more don’t provide disclosure in an explicit form than do,” said Jon C. Chambers, principal of Schultz Collins Lawson Chambers Inc. in San Francisco, a consulting firm and registered investment adviser supporting about $1 billion in retirement plan assets. “The majority make sure the prospectuses are delivered, things like that, but is that really disclosure?”

Stocks lose their footing: Steep slide by technology companies leads the region’s drop by Carolyn Said, San Francisco Chronicle, Friday, October 1, 2004.

“Every bull market since World War II has had at least one correction—a 10 percent drop, not a 20 percent drop,” said Jon Chambers, vice president of Schultz Collins Lawson Chambers, a San Francisco investment consulting firm that primarily works with institutional retirement plans. “It would be rational to assume that (the recent drop signals) a correction, without meaning that the bull market is over.”

From A fund limits its growth by Kathleen Pender, San Francisco Chronicle, Tuesday, July 20, 2004:

Fidelity Low-Priced Stock is the 10th most-popular fund in 401(k) plans. But if you don’t own it in your retirement plan by July 30, you won’t be able to buy it through your plan for the foreseeable future.

..The [Oregon state employees] plan decided to replace [Low-Priced Stock] with the American AAdvantage Small Cap Value fund. Pension fund consultant Jon Chambers is recommending the same fund to his clients as a replacement for Low-Priced Stock.