Products May 23, 2024

Product & Service Launches

Ameritas launches pooled employer plan for nonprofit organizations; Stash announced new workplace benefit StashWorks; Flex Benefits introduces insurance solution; and more.

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Ameritas Launches Pooled Employer Plan for Nonprofit Organizations

Ameritas has announced an addition to its flexible retirement plan platform and pooled employer plan offerings. The Ameritas 403(b) PEP is designed to support nonprofit organizations sponsoring ERISA 403(b) plans.

The Ameritas 403(b) PEP offers an integrated platform supporting compliance and fiduciary oversight, administrative recordkeeping and reporting, flexible investment strategies and automated engagement tools. Ameritas now offers the Ameritas 401(k) PEP to for-profit businesses and the Ameritas 403(b) PEP to nonprofit organizations.

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Instead of having to choose between sponsoring their own plan, or offering no retirement plan, the PEP enables a nonprofit to become an adopting employer. And that option removes a lot of the complexity and distractions nonprofit executives hope to avoid when looking at retirement benefits for their teams.

“Ameritas has a long record of providing the retirement plans expertise, back-office services, and onboarding support that lean, hardworking organizations are looking for,” Scott Holechek, vice president of institutional sales and retirement plans, said in a statement. “That’s one of our great strengths, doing the heavy lifting for people-focused organizations, which frees them to devote much more of their energy and resources to serving others.”

Stash Announces New Workplace Benefit StashWorks Backed by SHRM

Stash, an investing app, announced the launch of StashWorks, an employer benefit platform that aims to help salaried and hourly workers to improve their financial wellbeing. The product is backed by SHRM, an HR association.

Through StashWorks, employees can designate any dollar amount or paycheck percentage to save on pay day, earning rewards for “saving streaks” as they hit key financial wellness milestones. StashWorks works directly with employers and can be accessed through professional employer organizations as well as benefit brokers.

The first cohort of StashWorks partners includes Wonder, a food delivery service, Aurify Brands, a New York City independent restaurant operator, and PEAK6 Investments, a financial services firm. Other partners also include private and public brands in retail, customer service and insurance.

“It’s standard practice for employers to offer either a 401(k) or a pension for retirement, but hardworking Americans need just as much help saving for now,” Liza Landsman, Stash CEO, said in a statement. “StashWorks supports employees’ financial needs in both the short and long term, with the broader impact of helping companies elevate the employee experience.”

Flex Benefits Introduces Insurance Solution to Address Runaway Health Crisis

Flex Benefits Insurance Services announced its official company launch. The company offers proprietary product solutions that help individuals and families obtain insurance protections to combat high deductibles and out-of-pocket responsibilities when accidents, sickness, or critical illness strike.

In addition, Flex Benefits has created flexibility for consumers to temporarily pause their monthly premiums without terminating their insurance policy when other financial obligations become more imminent.

This is the seventh company in the last 18 years started by founder Jeff Smedsrud. Other companies include Healthcare.com, Pivot Health, IHC Specialty Benefits and HealthValues.

“America has a runaway medical debt crisis in which one in three individuals who buy individual health insurance—both under age 65 and over—end up with debts they cannot pay caused by insurance that often does not cover the first $10,000 in healthcare bills,” Smedsrud said in a statement. “Today we begin to fix this problem with the official launch of Flex Benefits.”

Hexure Expands Its Quoting to Include Annuities

Hexure, a provider of sales and regulatory automation solutions for the life and annuity industry, announced the addition of annuity products to its quoting solution.

“We are excited to expand our quoting capabilities to enable our clients and their advisers to quickly and easily run quotes for various lines of business and product types from a single platform,” Kevin Pohmer, chief product officer of Hexure, said in a statement.

“By adding annuity quoting to the Hexure platform, advisers no longer need to jump from one system to another to quote and submit life and annuity business. Now from one platform, advisers can quickly quote and compare products and then seamlessly flow into the e-application process.”

Hexure’s comparative quoting solution allows advisers to compare product rates, fees, as well as a host of product and carrier details. With the expansion to include annuities, advisers can access and filter annuity products based on product type or features and generate proposals to help clients make informed and confident buying decisions.

Compliance May 22, 2024

Bill Creating Crypto Regulatory Structure Moves Through House

Critics say the bill significantly weakens the regulatory structure on crypto assets.

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The Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act passed the House of Representatives Wednesday by a 279-136 vote. The bill was first proposed in July 2023 and passed out of the committees of jurisdiction on May 6. The Senate has not yet taken up the bill.

Representative Patrick McHenry, R-North Carolina, and the chair of the House Committee on Financial Services, today spoke in defense of the FIT Act at the Investment Company Institute 2024 Leadership Summit, a bill he is a sponsor of.

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The act would create a regulatory structure for the digital assets industry and has been criticized by Gary Gensler, the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. McHenry characterized Gensler’s criticism sarcastically as “shocking,” at the conference as Gensler is known to be a harsh critic of the crypto industry generally.

If passed, the bill, also known by its bill number, H.R. 4763, would assign regulatory authority to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission of digital assets that are decentralized, as well as over the cash or spot market for digital commodities. Decentralized is defined in the bill as a crypto asset in which “no person has unilateral authority to control the blockchain or its usage, and no issuer or affiliated person has control of 20% or more of the digital asset or the voting power of the digital asset.”

The SEC would regulate digital securities that are not decentralized, with additional exceptions for those that limit annual sales or non-accredited investor access. All rulemaking for digital assets would have to be joint rulemakings of the SEC and CFTC if the bill were passed.

Gensler today identified some potential issues in the bill in his statement. He noted that the bill allows crypto issuers to self-certify that they are decentralized and only gives the SEC 60 days to review and challenge such a certification. Gensler said that the SEC does not have the staffing to review the large volume of digital assets. He also suggested that “pump and dump schemes and penny stock pushers” could falsely claim digital asset status to avoid regulation and the SEC would only have 60 days to review it.

Representative Sean Casten, D-Illinois, proposed an amendment to the FIT bill that would have extended this deadline to 90 days, but it was not accepted.

Gensler added that existing rules are clear enough, it is just that the crypto industry does not want to follow them: “The crypto industry’s record of failures, frauds, and bankruptcies is not because we don’t have rules or because the rules are unclear. It’s because many players in the crypto industry don’t play by the rules. We should make the policy choice to protect the investing public over facilitating business models of noncompliant firms.”

McHenry responded during an interview with ICI CEO Eric Pan that “right now we have no definition of digital asset” under the law and that the bill will provide regulatory clarity for the industry. McHenry added that “it is the Gensler regime that has made things less certain,” and he will continue to focus on “speaking to legislators that have actual votes” on the bill.

The White House said in a statement that “the Administration opposes passage of H.R. 4763, which would affect the regulatory structure for digital assets in the United States,” suggesting that a veto of the bill would be likely if it were to reach President Joe Biden.

During debate on the bill, Representative Stephen Lynch, D-Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee Subcommittee on Digital Assets, described the act as among the “top three worst bills I have seen progress to the floor of the House.” Other opponents of the bill explained that it does not address crypto’s role in financing illicit activities and leaves much crypto enforcement to the CFTC, which traditionally has little experience working with intangible assets or in retail markets.

 

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