2026 IRA Series

The IRA rules are always changing, but it's been some time since we've had to adapt to so many changes, so quickly, for so many aspects of IRA servicing and administration. It’s harder than ever to differentiate the current rules from legacy rules, and what applies when. We'll wade through the latest and most imminent issues IRA and HSA providers face, and prioritize your focus to help keep you in compliance and sane. We’ll talk through the amazing savings potential of health savings accounts, but address the very real challenges these accounts present.

Since 2020, there has been change after change to the rules IRA beneficiaries must follow when they inherit IRA assets. These changes affect beneficiary planning in meaningful ways and will prompt IRA owners to revisit their estate plans, wills, and trusts as they become more and more familiar with the impact of the new rules. Further, the rule changes can drastically change the way IRA administrators manage IRA owner and inherited IRA owner processes and client service strategies. Let us help you distill it down to key information you must gather, and the key questions you must ask, in order to assist your beneficiaries at this critical fork-in-the-road.

How you open IRAs is important. Improper plan establishment can leave you vulnerable to penalties for noncompliance, as well as owner dissatisfaction. The problem is, the IRS must provide critical language for IRA plan establishment, and they don't always do so on our timelines. So how do you, as trustees or custodians, fulfill your obligation to remain in compliance and provide vital information to IRA owners? This session will explore the documents required to properly establish an IRA and how to keep your IRA owners up to date with current information. It will review the document retention requirements to follow to remain in compliance, as well as identify additional information that is helpful to capture and maintain.

IRA owners have unprecedented ability to move funds between tax-sheltered plans and may look to you for assistance. Are you ready? This nuts-and-bolts session will go over portability-related rules, terminology, and jargon for common transactions. It will review key transactional red flags to watch out for and common (avoidable) mistakes IRA owners and trustees/custodians make. We’ll also pass along vital working knowledge of transfer, rollover, and conversion transactions on which succinct internal procedures can be based.

At some point, Roth IRA owners want or need to dip into their Roth IRAs. These aren’t the same as Traditional distributions — system codes are different, the impact to owners is different, and your resulting reporting of these transactions is different. But different does not have to equal difficult. This session will contrast what the IRA owner is thinking about against what you should be thinking about so you can balance all considerations and confidently guide owners, streamline transactions, and avoid errors.

Communication is an essential component in the handling of required minimum distributions and discretionary IRA transactions. Trustees and custodians must report contributions, distributions, fair market values, required distributions, and more to IRA owners and/or the IRS. Join us to go through the required IRA statements and reports, enabling you to audit your processes, update them if necessary, and ensure you're in compliance with the requirements.