Pension Protection Act Blog

The ERISA Advisory Council’s Working Group on Participant Benefit Statements has delivered it’s report to the Dept. of Labor. This working group was formed to study the Pension Protecion Act’s requirement that benefits statements are furnished to plan participants in defined benefit and defined contribution plans. The group was also given the task […]

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The Dept. of Labor has updated Field Advisory Bulletin 2006-03. FAB 2006-03, issued last year, requires that pension benefit statement information will be furnished to participants and beneficiaries not later than 45 days following the end of the calendar quarter or calendar year as good faith compliance with Section 508 of the Pension Protection […]

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The ERISA Advisory Council is meeting next week, on Sept. 18th, 19th, and 20th. The schedule is:

Sept. 18 - 9am to 5pm is testimony on benefit statements required by the Pension Protection Act;
Sept. 19 - 9am is full council update on all working groups, then the Working Group on Financial Literacy will hear […]

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Several conversations today all circled around to the same point - how to map out the notices currently required to be provided to participants and beneficiaries into a coherent schedule so that the required information is provided by the required deadline. The Pension Protection Act added several new notices, including pension benefit statements, to […]

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Interesting question today - should the Quarterly Benefit Statement include the vesting schedule for the plan. The easiest answer to this question is to avoid it all together and provide the alternate notice because the alternate notice does not require vesting information to be provided this quarter, and hopefully the IRS will issue a […]

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Yesterday was a brief look at who should receive a pension benefit statement required by the Pension Protection Act, and when they should receive it by. Today, I wanted to take a brief look at what information the statement should contain for good faith compliance. Hopefully, the IRS will be releasing a model […]

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Section 508 of the Pension Protection Act requires that participants and beneficiaries - or at least SOME participants and beneficiaries - must be provided with a benefit statement containing some very specific information by some very certain deadlines. Determining what information must be provided, who the information must be provided to and when it […]

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A interesting debate has started on BenefitsLink.com about the contents of the new quarterly benefit statements required by PPA Section 508. The question is whether the quarterly benefit statements must include vesting information, or can it be provided to participants annually instead of quarterly? This is important because the first quarterly benefit statement […]

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