Peter Gulia

Peter Gulia—Fiduciary Guidance Counsel

Peter Gulia counsels people who manage retirement plans, and advises investment advisers. From 1984 through 2005, Peter worked for a large retirement-services business, in a huge financial-services company. From 2006, his law practice involves retirement plans and investment-adviser regulation. Peter focuses on fiduciary law, including exempting or undoing prohibited transactions, and investment advice. Peter is experienced with retirement services, including retirement-readiness education and holistic financial wellness, and helps plan fiduciaries select and monitor investment and service providers. Peter is counsel to States’ attorneys general. In the United States of America, Peter’s clients have principal offices in most States. Beyond the US, Peter is counsel to lawyers in 18 nations throughout Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Middle East. Peter Gulia is in Thomson Reuters’ Super Lawyers for 2015-2024.

Peter Gulia has written or spoken for many publications, including Benefits & Executive Compensation News, Bloomberg, Employee Benefit Adviser, Employee Benefit News, Federal Lawyer, Fiduciary News, Financial Advisor IQ, Financial Investment News, Financial Planning Journal, Forbes, 401(k) Advisor, The Hill, Kiplinger’s, The Kiplinger Retirement Report, Life & Health, Pension & Benefits Daily, Pensions & Investments, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Plan Consultant, Probate & Property, Retirement Advisor, Reuters, Securities Regulation & Law Report, Tax Notes, University Business, and The Wall Street Journal.

Peter’s focus is counseling fiduciaries of all kinds. Beyond advising a retirement plan’s lead fiduciary, Peter counsels investment managers and advisers about their fiduciary duties and compliance procedures. Peter advises lawyers, actuaries, and certified public accountants about their professional conduct.

To help retirement plan fiduciaries manage a plan’s expenses, Peter designs ways to simplify and reduce expenses while maintaining or increasing services. Peter offers legal, business, and investment advice on selections of recordkeepers, third-party administrators, and other service providers, including investment managers and advisers. Peter can serve as a retirement plan’s independent fiduciary to benefit a plan with conflict-free decisions.

Peter can serve as a consulting expert, or as a testifying expert, on how fiduciaries’ conduct met or breached their duties and standard of care. Peter’s matters as an expert include guidance on court proceedings about allegations that fiduciaries and service providers engaged in self-dealing transactions; breached fiduciaries’ duties of prudence and communication; and breached a fiduciary’s duties in selecting service providers, and making only proper delegations.

Since 1984, Peter has focused on the design, governance, fiduciary investment procedures, and administration of retirement plans. Beyond health, disability, retirement, and other plans governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, Peter has wide experience with church plans and governmental plans, and with how banking, insurance, and securities laws affect retirement plans.

Peter is widely published on fiduciary duties, investments, beneficiary designations, and domestic-relations orders. For 30 years, Peter has published primarily with Wolters Kluwer Law & Business; he is a lead or contributing author of six books in its Answer Book series and of ERISA: A Comprehensive Guide, and was a contributing editor for 401(k) Advisor. Peter is a Bloomberg Insights author. With the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Peter was a coauthor of The CPA’s Guide to Retirement Plans for Small Businesses.

Peter Gulia is an adjunct professor of Temple University’s Beasley School of Law, teaching for JD, LLM, and MST students three courses: Fiduciary Responsibility for Employee-Benefit Plans; Professional Conduct in Tax Practice; and Tax Research and Writing. Peter is the author of the coursebooks for those courses. Peter lectures in other courses, and supports other instruction. Peter also is a member of Temple Law’s Center for Tax Law and Public Policy.

Peter has taught and teaches a range of professional-education programs for the American College of Financial Services, American Law Institute, American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries, Association of Legal Administrators, Federal Bar Association, Fi360, Insured Retirement Institute, Investment Company Institute, National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, Worldwide Employee Benefits Network, and many other associations.

Peter is a member of the American and Philadelphia Bar Associations, the Association of Professional Responsibility Lawyers, and the ASPPA Benefits Council of Greater Philadelphia (serving on its steering committee). Peter served the National Association of Government Defined Contribution Administrators on its legislation and regulations committee, investment policy committee, and 403(b) task force.

AB 1981 Franklin and Marshall College; JD 1984 Villanova University

[email protected] www.FiduciaryGuidanceCounsel.com 215-732-1552