Core ERISA duties

• Act solely in participants’ and beneficiaries’ interests.
• Act for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits and paying reasonable plan expenses.
• Use the care, skill, prudence, and diligence of a knowledgeable person.
• Diversify investments to minimize large-loss risk unless clearly prudent not to do so.
• Follow plan documents to the extent they comply with ERISA.

Settlor versus fiduciary decisions

Establishing, amending, or terminating a plan is generally a business—or settlor—decision. Implementing the decision, administering benefits, controlling plan assets, selecting investments, paying plan expenses, and monitoring delegates may be fiduciary conduct.

Governance cycle

1. Name the fiduciaries and document delegated authority.
2. Maintain a committee charter, calendar, minutes, and decision record.
3. Benchmark provider services and total plan and participant fees.
4. Monitor investments using the plan’s documented process, not short-term performance alone.
5. Review cybersecurity, data, fidelity-bond, prohibited-transaction, and conflict controls.
6. Reconcile participant contributions and loan repayments from payroll to the trust.
7. Track operational errors, corrections, complaints, litigation, and regulatory changes.

Participant contributions

Participant contributions become plan assets and must be forwarded as soon as they can reasonably be segregated from employer assets. The “15th business day” is not a safe harbor. For plans with fewer than 100 participants, deposits made no later than the seventh business day after withholding receive a regulatory safe harbor.