Benefits & ERISA Law

In addition to more fulsome disclosure of revenue sharing and other types of indirect fees that plan service providers charge, the final revisions to Schedule C of the Form 5500 will require plan administrators and TPAs to spend a lot of time with their systems administrators over the next year.  Take a look (if you haven't already) at the extensive list of new fee codes to be used for different types of compensation.  Assuming the "eligible indirect compensation" alternative reporting option is not available, plan administrators must capture and tag all compensation paid by the plan with a specific code.  The list is too long to reproduce here, but here is a sampling that brought tears to our eyes: 

·                  Float revenue (Code #62)

·                  Non-monetary compensation (Code #56)

·                  Fees for "insurance services" (Code #23)

·                  Investment management fees (Codes # 52 and #53)

·                  "Soft dollar" commissions (Code #68); and

·                  Copying and duplicating (#36) 

In addition to these, we are actively soliciting explanations or theories for the Department's need to have two separate codes (#53 and #69) for "Insurance brokerage commissions and fees." Query: if those fees and commissions are also reportable on the Schedule A, would this qualify as triple counting?