Program dedicated to finding missing participants is missing a couple other things
Compared to EBSA's successful missing participant program, PBGC's program is lacking some basics, Inspector General says.
The Pension Benefits Guaranty Corp. is unable to measure the success of a program designed to hold retirement benefits for missing participants and beneficiaries in terminated retirement plans, the agency’s Office of Inspector General said in a just-released report.
“We found that the Corporation does not have performance measures for the program,” the IG said. “PBGC officials did not provide a response as to why performance measures were not established. Furthermore, PBGC does not track the ongoing universe of missing participants.”
Congress gave the PBGC authority to broaden the existing program in 2006. The corporation expanded the program to offer services to terminating plans that were not covered by the PBGC’s pension insurance program, including defined contribution plans and small professional defined benefits plans. Congress also extended the program to include missing people in multiemployer plans whose sponsors terminate and close out their plans, the IG said. The PBGC’s Office of Benefits Administration manages the program.
But the IG said that although there is a process in place to administer the missing persons program, the lack of resources devoted to it shows that the PBGC has not emphasized the program.
“Simply having a process is not enough,” the IG said, adding that if reducing the number of missing participants is a strategic objective for the agency, then identifying performance measures and implementing them is needed.
Specifically, the IG said that in addition to a lack of performance measures, the program uses unreliable data management practices and its procedures do not reflect the actual business practices that should be used in program administration.
“Without performance measures, identifying outliers in performance is difficult, and not having sound data management practices has led to a lack of quantitative data available for program evaluation,” the IG said.
The PBGC and the Labor Department’s Employee Benefits Security Administration have signed an agreement to expand efforts to find individuals and helping them obtain their benefits.
The IG said that EBSA has full-time benefit advisors searching for people, adding that from 2017 to 2020, the agency united participants and beneficiaries with $163.6 in previously unclaimed benefits.
The IG said that EBSA officials said they were successful in locating people because they provided adequate resources to the effort,
Responding to the report, the PBGC said it would develop performance measures for the program by June 30. In addition, the agency agreed to review staffing of the program to determine if it is adequate.