Nationwide In-House 401(k) Fund Class Action Advances to Trial

Former Nationwide Mutual Insurance Co. employees can go to trial on claims their 401(k) plan wrongly offered an affiliated stable value fund that treated the company’s own workers worse than outside investors.

A trial is needed to determine whether Nationwide properly monitored the challenged fund—which held more than $1.75 billion in plan assets as of 2020—and whether the plan was charged a fair price, Judge Sarah D. Morrison said. She pointed to the “palpable tension” created by Nationwide’s refusal to allow its outside investment consultant to review relevant aspects of the fund, saying that this “dissonance demands further exploration.”

Morrison ...