Identifying and Locating Missing Participants

by | Feb 20, 2018 | Retirement Planning

participants

It is known that in today’s age, connections to people are possible through the internet. However, it is very alarming to know that several plan administrators are actually losing track of people or participants eligible for a certain plan or service. This finding is according to the 2016 study conducted by the Department of Labor.

Because of this, the DOL started an initiative to find these participants for them to be able to claim their benefits. This program was piloted since most administrators do not take enough steps to locate their former employees. Most of them only send a mail of notification to the participants and eventually stop from there. So, what is this program all about?

FAB 2014-1

The DOL issued the FAB 2014-1 or the Field Assistance Bulletin 2014-1 which is a set of guidelines for administrators to follow for the location of missing participants. It is stated in the FAB that plan fiduciaries must take the necessary attempts to locate any missing participants for them to claim benefits. It also includes a set of distribution plans that can be the options of the administrator for spreading of benefits.

Steps For Search

There is a provided step for documenting and searching for missing plan participants laid out by DOL.

  1.    First, you will have to obtain a DOL-certified mail notice in the case that the fiduciary didn’t prepare one for the participant. This will be sent to the participant or his or her beneficiary ones you have found a lead on where they are.
  2.    The first task for searching is by checking the employer’s records. Possible contact information may still be in the employer’s office, so you may want to check it out first.
  3.    If you have not found a lead in his or her employer, you may want to check the plans the employer had filed in the past. A beneficiary may pop-up in those documents that you may contact to locate the missing participant.
  4.    If all else fails, you can try to use free search engines on the internet. It will search for your participant in records and databases publicly available on the web.

It is convenient that we are living in the digital age. We must make use of the technology to be able to give our participants the rightful benefits that they should receive after their employment.

Did you experience the same problem with missing participants? If you did, how did you solve this problem? Share it with us here!