NEW: Forbes’ Siedle Launches Crowdfunding Site to Investigate Pensions
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Former SEC lawyer and Forbes columnist Edward Siedle, who investigated then-General Treasurer Gina Raimondo's pension investments in 2013, has launched a crowdfunding site for participants to investigate retirement plans.
"This is a paradigm shift," said Siedle. "And one of the upsides is that there's anonymity -- if individuals want to to have funds investigated, they can do so with complete privacy."
According to the website, interested parties can call or email to start the process of potentially look into local and state pensions plans, private corporate pension plans, defined contribution plans, 457, or 403(b) plans.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLAST"Call, or email us, if you would like to propose an investigation you are willing to contribute toward. If we agree a high-impact investigation is possible at an achievable funding level, we will post the investigation for funding on kickstarter.com. If the project doesn’t meet its funding goal, no money changes hands. The funding goal will be the minimum amount we believe is needed to complete the investigation," write Siedle on the site.
"The time is ripe to use crowdfunding to disrupt the fundamentally-flawed pension and retirement plan paradigm that has failed the nation’s retirement savers for decades. The existing paradigm, which specifically excludes the very individuals whose money is at risk, never did make any sense. Participants allowed no voice whatsoever in how the plans in which they invest are structured, or managed? That’s the way it’s been for over fifty years," said Sieldle.
In a piece in Forbes Magazine, Siedle explains the concept of crowdfunding for pension investigations.
"The perennial question has been: who’s willing and able to pay for an in-depth expert investigation? A second opinion, if you will," wrote Siedle. "Today participants pay the cost of the financial advisers their employers hire to handle plan matters yet lack access to experts of their own choosing to review decisions that are supposedly made solely with their best interests in mind. Lacking plan-specific information and expertise, participants are incapable of weighing-in on plan matters even if they wanted to. And, as mentioned earlier, the existing paradigm does not permit participant input."
"I've gotten quite a reaction so far since this has launched," said Siedle. "It will be interesting to see how wants to see this type of investigation of pension funds."
Siedle notes that to date in his career he has investigated over $1 trillion in retirement plans for conflicts of interest; excessive and undisclosed fees; investment underperformance and wrongdoing.
Related Slideshow: RI Public Pension Reform: Wall Street’s License To Steal
See the key findings from Forbes' columnist Edward Siedle, who unveiled his investigative report into the RI pension system, "License to Steal," in October 2013.
"The Employee Retirement System of Rhode Island has secretly agreed to permit hedge fund managers to keep the state pension in the dark regarding how its assets are being invested; to grant mystery hedge fund investors a license to steal, or profit at its expense using inside information; and to engage in potentially illegal nondisclosure practices," said Siedle.
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