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:

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently released the results of a study of 24 investment consultants. The study uncovered numerous instances of undisclosed or poorly disclosed conflicts of interest among the nation’s largest pension consulting firms. Although the study doesn’t name any of the implicated consultants, SEC officials have confirmed that many of the consulting firms examined face legal actions, fines and “deficiency letters”. SCLC first discussed this issue in a June 2004 Fiduciary Forum article.

Specifically, the SEC’s sweeps found:

• More than half of the consultants or their affiliates examined regularly provided services and products to both pension funds and money managers/ mutual funds, and many earned a “significant part of their annual revenue” from dealings with the latter.

During fall 2004, Plan Sponsor magazine conducted its annual survey of investment consulting firms. We are very pleased to report that Schultz Collins Lawson Chambers, Inc. (SCLC) received the highest overall client satisfaction rating of all consulting firms ranked in the Plan Sponsor 2004 Consultant Survey (free registration required).

In the survey, 921 plan sponsors rated 42 consulting firms in nine different categories. SCLC received three best in class designations, indicating that we ranked in the top 10% among rated firms. The survey results further singled out SCLC for the knowledge and experience of the firm’s personnel. Best in class awards were given for SCLC’s:

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.

‘F’ stocks rise to top of class by Kathleen Pender. San Francisco Chronicle, Thursday, November 13, 2003.

So what’s out of whack: the model or the market?

Jon Chambers, a principal with Schultz Collins Lawson Chambers in San Francisco, says the results suggest that Schwab’s approach “doesn’t really work. It shows you how hard it is to come up with a system for beating the market.”