Former and current plan participants in 401(k) plans sponsored by Mercy Health Corporation are now suing the operators of hospitals/clinics and their fiduciaries for ERISA breaches under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. The lawsuit asserts that the defendants, or the fiduciaries, did not employ a vigilant process for effectively supervising these plan participant employee benefit plans. Plan participants also accuse the 401(k) fiduciaries of failing to plan expenses.
Per the complaint filed on Tuesday in Illinois, the defendants allegedly let the employee benefit plan pay sales commissions on investment services and products and refused to observe the performance of investment funds held by the employee benefit plan. The two plaintiffs who filed the lawsuit assert they are suing on behalf of former and current participants in three retirement plans that amalgamated or were consolidated under the Mercy Health blanket. Consequently, the lawsuit alleges that these “funds have consistently underperformed their benchmark indexes, and the investment marketplace for similarly sized plans is replete with lower cost, better-performing funds.”
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