The Department of Labor’s auditors are pushing harder on plan sponsors to make better efforts to find missing terminated vested participants in retirement plans. In return, there’s a call for more guidance on just how far sponsors have to go to do so.
According to a report in Pensions & Investments, the matter has become more urgent in the wake of MetLife’s experience. After the company had “lost track” of some 13,500 participants, the DOL entered the picture. The company’s earlier efforts to find those lost participants were deemed unacceptable, and then state and federal inquiries began.
But DOL auditors, according to a letter from the American Benefits Council to Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor Timothy Hauser last fall requesting formal rulemaking on comprehensive guidance for plan fiduciaries, have been “inconsistent and alarming” in routine examinations.
The report says, “Some auditors said that failure to find a missing participant was a breach of fiduciary duty, or forfeiting funds back into a plan until participants are found is a prohibited transaction, and plan sponsors could be penalized. Auditors also have insisted that sponsors try different search methods every year or reach out to friends and former colleagues of the missing participant or through social media. Some plan sponsors have been told they must do ‘whatever it takes’ to find participants who are missing or not responding to communications.”
Large defined benefit plans are creating the loudest outcry, according to members reaching out to the ERISA Industry Committee in Washington on the issue. “It’s frustrating for them because there is just a lack of guidance on what activities they have to engage in, and how long they have to be engaged in it,” Will Hansen, senior vice president of retirement and compensation policy, is quoted saying in the report.