Benefits July 15, 2004

Qwest Retirees Sue DoL For Pension Details

July 15, 2004 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Qwest Communications International Inc. retirees have filed a federal lawsuit against the Department of Labor (DoL) seeking details about an audit of the firm's pension fund.
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Retiree Mimi Hull filed suit in US District Court, accusing the Labor Department of stalling and acting in bad faith after previous attempts to get information about a DoL audit of Qwest’s pension fund were rejected. This after Hull submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to get documents the Labor Department has gathered as part of an audit begun in 2001 in March, according to news sources.

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In 1999, the pension fund totaled $14.6 billion, which included a surplus of $5.7 billion.Qwest’s pension fund had as much as a $385 million deficit in 2002, which has since been turned around to a $2 million surplus in 2003 (SeeEquity Gains in 2003 Equal Black Ink for Pension Plans ).

The Denver-based telecommunications company blames the plunge in value on the faltering economy and more benefit payments, and says the pension fund is still fully funded. Some retirees are skeptical of the reported position, pointing to federal investigations into the company’s accounting practices, and need more information.

Benefits July 14, 2004

PLUGGED IN – If You Build it…

Our Topic: If You Build It They Don't Always Come…
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That is the conclusion of a study byAssociates, which found that only 35% of defined contribution plan participants use 401(k) online information tools at all.

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Associates’ conclusions are not an anomaly. “In general, our observation is that the level of sophistication of the plan participant sites is orders of magnitude greater than the sophistication of the participants themselves,” says Lou Harvey, president of DALBAR, Inc., a financial services research company in. “Yes, they offer some tremendous features. However, the level of interest and sophistication is so far away from that, and the needs are so much simpler than that, that they are virtually useless.”

On June 17, PLANSPONSOR’s “Plugged In” webinar series brought together , PLANSPONSOR Editor-in-Chief Nevin Adams,Mark Davis , president of Mark A. Davis Consulting, Greenwich Associates Managing DirectorChris McNickle , DALBAR President and CEO Lou Harvey, and Fred Reish, managing director and partner of the Los Angeles-based law firm of Reish Luftman Reicher & Cohen, to discuss “Even If You Build it, They Don’t Always Come – Motivating Participants to Use Retirement Planning Tools.”

The Powerpoint presentation is HERE

The Voice file (in .mp3 format) is HERE

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