Q1 2026 Newsletter
April 14, 2026
As we move further into 2026, one thing is clear: retirement plan administration continues to get more complex and more important to get right.
This past quarter, we published several articles addressing common (and costly) misconceptions, emerging compliance challenges, and structural issues we’re seeing across plans of all sizes. Below is a quick summary of what you may have missed, along with a few important reminders for the year ahead.
What We're Seeing
Across Retirement Plans:
When evaluating retirement plan service providers, business leaders often evaluate pricing, overlooking the importance of quality, or service levels. Obvious service quality questions may include: How quickly can we expect a response when we have questions? Will questions be answered accurately the first time? Will the person responding be at all familiar with our particular plan(s), or will it be a general customer service agent? While these are important considerations in vendor selection decisions in many service industries, there’s an additional layer with retirement plan administration which is a fundamental reality: it is inherently complex. As we explore in the article below, that complexity makes operational errors not just possible, but likely, as proactive oversight is typically not found with low-cost, low-quality retirement plan service providers.
Most business owners focus most of their attention on revenue and growth, thinking about taxes only when necessary. Yet the structure of a business plays a pivotal role in retirement planning, influencing contribution limits, deductions, and long-term outcomes. Understanding the relationship between entity type and retirement planning is critical to maximizing contributions, deductions, and long-term retirement income.
For many employers, payroll is the operational backbone of the organization. It touches compensation, taxes, benefits, and reporting—so it’s understandable why retirement plans are often bundled there as well. If payroll providers offer a 401(k) solution, it can feel efficient to keep everything under one roof. But efficiency in payroll processing is not the same as effectiveness in retirement plan administration. As retirement plan regulations grow more complex—particularly under SECURE 2.0—many plan sponsors are discovering that payroll platforms simply weren’t designed to handle the interpretive, judgment-based responsibilities required to administer a qualified retirement plan.
It’s Not Just You: 2026 Feels More Complicated for Retirement Plans, because It IS More Complicated!
If administering a retirement plan feels more complicated than it used to, you’re not imagining it. The changes taking effect in 2026 are a continuation of several years of phased-in legislation, inflation adjustments, and regulatory guidance, much of it stemming from the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022. Add in changes that took effect in 2024 and 2025, and the result is a retirement plan environment with more moving parts than many employers and participants are equipped to manage. Here’s what’s changing, and why 2026 stands out.
There are an estimated two million non-profit organizations in the U.S. This includes public charities, private foundations, and other types of organizations, such as schools and religious institutions. These entities operate under different tax laws and structures than for-profit companies do.
2026 Compliance Calendar
Beyond tracking dates, effective compliance requires coordination between payroll, plan documents, and regulatory requirements. To help you stay ahead, we’ve put together a 2026 Retirement Plan Compliance Calendar outlining key deadlines throughout the year for calendar-year plans.
2026 Annual Limits Reminder
Updated contribution limits and thresholds are now in effect and may impact both plan administration and participant strategy.
We continually update the Annual Limits page on our website.
We hope you enjoyed our article roundup! If you have ideas for topics you'd like us to cover, our team of experts at Primark Benefits is here to assist you and answer any questions you may have.
For years, many California employers viewed CalSavers as something they would “deal with later.” As the state gradually rolled out mandatory retirement program deadlines based on employer size, it was easy for smaller businesses to push the issue down the road. Now, those deadlines have passed, the employee headcount threshold is now ONE— and enforcement is becoming very real.
In Part I of this series , we explored how differences in retirement plan service models can influence risks related to compliance, oversight, and fiduciary areas. In Part II, the focus shifts to a more concrete question: How do these differences ultimately affect the total cost of maintaining a retirement plan over time? While administrative fees are often the most visible expense, they represent only a portion of a plan’s true cost. The broader financial impact—what is often referred to as total cost of ownership—includes the downstream effects of operational efficiency, compliance accuracy, and the ability to fully utilize the plan’s design.
Medical and dental practices often assume their retirement plan options are relatively straightforward and should be simple to administer. In reality, these businesses frequently present some of the most complex retirement plan challenges among small-to-mid-sized employers.