The U.S. Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration has provided some guidance related to locating and distributing benefits to “missing or nonresponsive participants.”
According to Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor for the Employee Benefits Security Administration Jeanne Klinefelter Wilson, “In fiscal year 2020 alone, EBSA’s investigators helped missing and nonresponsive participants recover benefits with a present value in excess of $1.4 billion.”
The guidance is provided in three components:
1. A list of “best practices” that fiduciaries “should consider as steps their plan could take to help reduce missing participant issues and ensure that plan participants receive promised benefits when they reach retirement age.”
2. Compliance Assistance Release 2021-01, which outlines the “general investigative approach that will guide all of EBSA’s Regional Offices under the Terminated Vested Participants Project” and facilitate voluntary compliance efforts by plan fiduciaries (including the information EBSA asks for as part of an investigation, the errors they look for, and how cases are closed).
3. Field Assistance Bulletin 2021-01, which “authorizes, as a matter of enforcement policy” the use of the PBGC missing participant program by plan fiduciaries of terminating defined contribution plans for missing or nonresponsive participant’s account balances.
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