The Aug. 30 retirement plan participant fee disclosure deadline will come and go with nary a blip on the radar screen, but come Nov. 14, when plan sponsors must release their first quarterly update, the phones could start ringing off the hook.

The disclosures that are due by Thursday will only add a couple of columns to a plan participant's usual disclosure documents, but the Nov. 14 deadline will give them actual dollars and cents that they've spent on fees, said Dan Weeks, founder, COO and executive vice president of plan sponsor solutions for San Diego-based BrightScope.

The problem with the participant-level fee disclosure is that "nothing in the regulation forces anyone to put anything in context for the participants," he said. The first disclosure plan participants receive will look much like the prospectuses they now receive in the mail so they will "go over their heads."