Kwasha Lipton

Kwasha Lipton was an employee benefits consulting firm located in Fort Lee, New Jersey. It was founded in 1944 by H. Charles "Chick" Kwasha and Maurice Lipton.

Kwasha Lipton is best known for creating a special type of defined benefit pension plan called a cash balance plan, which it designed for the employees of Bank of America in 1985. Kwasha Lipton implemented dozens of cash balance plans for its other clients, and these plans were ultimately adopted by various companies throughout the United States. Some employees allege that the plans discriminate against older workers in violation of federal age discrimination law because of the way in which younger and older employees earn benefits under cash balance plans. Legal challenges have generally been decided in favor of plan sponsors, however, and the plans have been approved by both the Internal Revenue Service and the Pension Protection Act of 2006.

Kwasha Lipton was acquired in 1996 by Coopers & Lybrand and became the Kwasha Lipton Group of Coopers & Lybrand. Coopers & Lybrand then merged with Price Waterhouse on July 1, 1998 to form PricewaterhouseCoopers. The Kwasha Lipton Group was combined with PricewaterhouseCoopers' other benefit consulting groups to create Unifi, which...
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