Compliance March 9, 2011

Wisc. Man Diverted $1.3M from Profit-Sharing Plan

The U.S. Department of Labor (DoL) sued Coin Builders LLC of Wisconsin Rapids and its president, Joseph Kreeger, to restore more than $1.3 million plus interest to the company’s profit-sharing plan.
Reported by

A news release said the lawsuit alleges that Kreeger improperly transferred $1.3 million in plan assets to a Coin Builders LLC bank account.  Kreeger also allegedly handled plan assets without being bonded as required by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).

The suit seeks a court order to restore money owed to the plan, correct transactions prohibited by law, remove Kreeger and Coin Builders LLC from serving as fiduciaries to the plan, and permanently bar them from serving as fiduciaries to any ERISA-covered plan in the future. 

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It also asks the court to appoint an independent fiduciary to terminate the plan and to distribute the plan’s assets to eligible participants and beneficiaries.

Products March 9, 2011

Wells Fargo Completes Retirement System Conversion

Wells Fargo’s Institutional Retirement and Trust business has successfully completed all phases of its retirement systems conversion.
Reported by

The final phase of conversion occurred in late February, resulting in the transition of 1,031 employer-sponsored retirement plans with 2.9 million eligible employee participants (819,000 with active balances) and $35 billion in retirement assets to the WySTAR recordkeeping platform.  WySTAR is Wells Fargo’s proprietary, 401(k) recordkeeping system.   

The announcement said Wells Fargo’s institutional retirement business had strong sales growth in the defined contribution market in 2010, adding more than $5.6 billion in retirement plan assets and 287 new, employer-sponsored retirement plans to the firm’s book of business. A total of 387,000 employees at companies across the country became participants in a Wells Fargo-administered 401(k) plan in 2010, a year that marked the strongest sales results in 20 years for the institutional retirement business.   

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The Wells Fargo institutional retirement business currently services 7,440 retirement plans for companies and reached 3.5 million employees participating in employer-sponsored retirement plans with its retirement education programs in 2010.

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