Kathleen Pender quoted SCLC Principal Jon Chambers, head of the firm’s retirement plans consulting practice, in a column published on Thursday January 12, 2012, discussing a new 401(k) product that features index funds and default enrollment into a managed account product.

Kathleen Pender quoted SCLC Principal Jon Chambers, head of the firm’s retirement plans consulting practice, in an article that appeared on Friday October 15, 2010, on new regulations requiring standard disclosure of fees, investment performance and other relevant information to participants in 401(k) and other similar retiement plans.

Earlier today, the DOL issued a Final Rule to Improve Transparency of Fees and Expenses to Workers in 401(k)-Type Retirement Plans.

The rule will be published in the Federal Register on October 20, 2010, will become effective beginning on December 20, 2010, and become applicable to covered individual account plans for plan years beginning on or after November 1, 2011. For calendar year plans, compliance will be required on January 1, 2012.

If you are interested, you can read the entire 142 page rule, or you can review the (much shorter) DOL Fact Sheet.

On July 16, 2010 the Department of Labor (DOL) issued an interim final rule on fee disclosure in 401(k) and other retirement plans. The new regulation (referred to as the 408(b)(2) regulation) is intended to help plan fiduciaries to better understand the compensation paid to plan providers, and to help to highlight any conflicts of interest that may affect a provider’s performance under a service contract or arrangement. The interim final rule will take effect on July 16, 2011.

An interim final rule means that the public has a short period to make comments—in this case 45 days from the July 16 issuance date. Although public comments are invited, the regulations are essentially in final form, but may be modified after additional comments are received. The interim final rule replaces proposed rules, issued in 2007, but never finalized.

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).

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.”

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently published tips to assist fiduciaries of employee benefit plans in reviewing conflicts of interest of pension consultants. The guidance, Selecting and Monitoring Pension Consultants—Tips for Plan Fiduciaries, addresses questions raised by an SEC staff report on potential conflict of interest disclosures by pension consultants.

The tips include a series of questions that DOL and SEC believe plan sponsors should ask their pension consultants. In the interest of full disclosure, we’ve reproduced these questions, and our responses, below: