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HARRIS TRUST AND SAV. BANK Thomas, J., dissenting
The second source from which the Court distills its "risk of loss" test is the premise, based on ERISA "as a whole," that "Congress commodiously imposed fiduciary standards on persons whose actions affect the amount of benefits retirement plan participants will receive." Ante, at 96. Even were that true, there is no need to resort to such general understandings of the policy behind a statute when the language suggests a contrary meaning. Cf. Connecticut Nat. Bank, 503 U. S., at 253-254; Park 'N Fly, Inc. v. Dollar Park & Fly, Inc., 469 U. S. 189, 194 (1985) (statutory construction begins with "the assumption that the ordinary meaning of [the] language accurately expresses the legislative purpose"). The text of § 401(b)(2) gives no reason to think that Congress meant to protect pension plans from all risk or to impose a fiduciary duty on the insurer whenever the pension plan faced a possibility of loss. Congress easily could have required that all funds credited to a pension plan be guaranteed, but it did not.
Moreover, contrary to the Court's assumption, in the statute "as a whole" Congress did not impose fiduciary duties on all persons whose actions affect the amount of benefits plan participants receive. In the same section that contains the guaranteed benefit policy exception, for example, Congress exempted pension plans' investments in mutual funds from ERISA's fiduciary provisions. See 29 U. S. C. § 1101(b)(1); H. R. Conf. Rep. No. 93-1280, p. 296 (1974). Obviously, pension plans bear a significant risk with respect to such investments, yet Congress allowed them to bear that risk without imposing fiduciary duties on the companies that manage the funds.
In any event, as long as a policy provides for guaranteed benefits as I have described them, the connection between the return to the plan and the amount of benefits individual plan participants receive is remote. The insurer's investment performance would influence the amount of benefits if participants received either variable benefits or fixed benefit
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