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Compliance October 27, 2025
PBGC Releases 2026 Premiums With Slight Increases
Rates are rising slightly, in tandem with inflation, for the insurance cost pension plans must pay the agency.
Reported by James Van Bramer
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation announced its premium rates—the insurance payments that corporate pension funds make to the federal guarantor—for 2026, showing slight increases across the board.
The PBGC insures private sector defined benefit plans covered under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, and those plans must file yearly information to the PBGC and pay the insurance premium to the agency, per the PBGC’s regulations.
The flat rate premium per participant in single-employer plans will rise by 4.7% to $111 per participant in 2026 from $106, the PBGC announced Monday. The rate per $1,000 in unvested benefits, not subject to indexing, was frozen by Congress in Section 349 of the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 and therefore remains $52.
For variable rate premiums, the per-participant cap will rise 4.7% to $751 per participant. Meanwhile, multiemployer plans that only pay a per-participant premium will see the per-participant rate for flat rate premiums rise to $40 from $39.