When an employee forgets—or chooses not—to notify you of a divorce, it can cause a ripple effect on your benefit plan administration, particularly with your health plan. Here's what you need to know and do to keep your health plan compliant and minimize risk.
Coverage Ends at Divorce
The first thing you need to know is when coverage terminates ...
The Department of Labor (DOL) issued guidance earlier this month that will affect defined benefit plans’ annual funding notices. The annual funding notice requirements were amended by SECURE 2.0 and are effective for plan years beginning after December 31, 2023. The changes made by the Act, and the guidance issued by the DOL, are intended to ...
Under SECURE 2.0, plan sponsors were granted discretion to determine whether or not the plan would recoup "inadvertent benefit overpayments." However, SECURE 2.0, did not define the term, leaving implementation of the new provision unclear for plan sponsors. To provide more guidance on the provision, last year, the IRS released Notice 2024-77
Late last year, the Department of Labor (DOL) launched the public Retirement Savings Lost and Found Database. Created as part of SECURE 2.0, the DOL hopes that the database will serve as a centralized location to help missing participants and beneficiaries locate their retirement benefits. Missing participants remain a focus area on audit ...
If your health insurance premiums have gone up again, you are not alone. For that reason, we frequently get questions from clients on whether there is anything they can do to get high claimants off of their plans. The short answer is no, an employer cannot kick a high claimant off their health plan even if the employee was lasered by your stop loss. There ...
While the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Initiative (“PCORI”) fee was updated at the turn of the year, the fee is not actually paid until July. For those of you that forgot about the fee, this is your reminder to start the process now before the good weather of summer arrives.
The Affordable Care Act imposed the PCORI fee on specified ...
On February 25, 2025, the White House issued a new executive order aimed at implementing many of the Administration's previously issued directives to health plans. During his first term in 2019, President Trump issued an executive order on health care price and quality transparency supported by Section 1311(e)(3) of the ACA, which imposes ...
If you have equity as part of your retirement or executive compensation plans, you likely need a 409A valuation. The need for a valuation also applies if you are preparing to issue equity (equity grants or stock options) or synthetic equity (stock appreciation rights or phantom equity). In all of those cases, an independent 409A valuation of the ...
There is a telltale sign that you are a true benefit nerd . . . you have printouts of the annual benefit plan limits tacked to the wall by your desk. I frequently reference my charts, but It has been a few years since I found a comprehensive chart online that encompassed both the retirement and health plan limits that I need at my fingertips regularly. After ...
Just before the holidays, two bills impacting reporting under the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), H.R. 3801 (EMPLOYER REPORTING IMPROVEMENT ACT) and H.R. 3797 (PAPERWORK BURDEN REDUCTION ACT), passed both houses and were sent to the President for signature. President Biden signed the bills into law, making the changes effective for the ...