2022 AICPA & CIMA Employee Benefit Plans Accounting, Auditing and Regulatory Update

Recent headlines have been dominated by major economic challenges and a shift in geopolitics. In this talk, Jason Schenker, President of Prestige Economics and Chairman of The Futurist Institute®, will explore the challenges of current economic and financial market dynamics, as well as geopolitical topics. Mr. Schenker's remarks will address the state of inflation, global debt, interest rates, equities, bond yields, commodities, and foreign exchange markets. There will also be a discussion of the potential near-term impacts of higher interest rates on economic growth, business investment, and the labor market. Mr. Schenker will discuss how Cold War Two® has contributed to the downdraft in financial markets and growth as well as what future challenges lie ahead for global stability, global supply chain, and commodity markets. Looking further into the future, Mr. Schenker will discuss how long-run trendlines in demographics and technology reveal some economic risks and opportunities. Mr. Schenker will share actionable takeaways and winning strategies to help companies succeed in the current era of uncertainty. Plus, Mr. Schenker will also share actionable winning strategies for the decade ahead.

Feeling a little PEPish? Pooled Employer Plans (or PEPs) are a variety of multiple employer plan that came into being as part of the original SECURE Act. PEPs have been permissible since 2021, and they are popping up all over the industry. Join Ilene Ferenczy for a survey of these plans, including what PEPs have to offer, what drawbacks exist, what rules are still not fleshed out by the IRS and the DOL, and what the auditing challenges for these plans can be.

A significant amount of information is electronically initiated, recorded, processed, or reported, and information to be used as audit evidence may be available only in electronic form. During this session we will explore SAS No. 142, Audit Evidence, the new auditing standard that addresses what constitutes audit evidence. We will also look at different types of information commonly presented to an auditor during the audit of an employee benefit plan, and identify considerations for auditors when evaluating information to be used as audit evidence.

This session will discuss standards and other developments that impact employee benefit plan audits.

This presentation focuses on risk management best practices when conducting audits of employee benefit plans. The session offers lessons learned from CAMICO’s decades-long history defending CPAs from employee benefit plan and other A&A claims and provides important dos and don’ts to protect CPAs and their clients.

Topics highlighted will include:

• Where do EBP audit claims come from? What does history tell us?

• Impact of select recent pronouncements including:

• SAS No. 136 – Forming an Opinion and Reporting on Financial Statements of Employee Benefit Plans Subject to ERISA

• The recent suite of auditing standards

• SSARS No. 25 – Materiality in a Review of Financial Statements and Adverse Conclusions

• Lessons learned from CAMICO claims history

• Other risk management techniques to CYA (“cover your auditing/attest work”)

In this session, we will discuss some of the most common issues identified during the 2022 EBP audit season and ways that plan sponsors might be able to “fix” those issues. The issues covered in this session will not only include operational errors, such as definition of compensation errors, but they will also include fiduciary errors, such as certain prohibited transactions, and late filing errors. In order to provide diverse perspectives on each of the topics covered, you will hear from both an auditor and a tax specialist.

join us for this panel discussion featuring panelist from Empower, Principal and Fidelity. They will discuss opportunities and challenges that recordkeepers face and discuss collaborations with auditors. They will also discuss  how recordkeepers operate, with consideration to changing technology and general environmental changes.