Compliance February 20, 2009

PBGC Announces no Automatic Waiver of Missed Contribution Notice

February 20, 2009 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) announced it is not granting an automatic waiver for 2009 of the requirement to notify the agency of missed quarterly contributions under section 4043 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and PBGC's reportable events regulation (29 CFR Part 4043).
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The nation’s private pension insurer said it will still grant case-by-case waivers where appropriate.

The agency noted that automatic waivers have been granted by Technical Update for 2008 and prior years where the employer had 100 or fewer participants covered by its plans, or had between 100 and 500 participants covered by its plans and had missed contributions to a plan that was well-funded. It said it has seen that many plans that did not report missed quarterlies because of the automatic waiver later terminated with unfunded liabilities, and that if missed-quarterly reports had been made, it might have been able to work with plan sponsors to avoid the underfunded terminations.

The announcement said that revised forms for 2009 reportable events will be posted soon on PBGC’s Web site at www.pbgc.gov .

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