Pension plan participant management is more challenging than ever. That’s why we’ve put together four quick tips for plan administrators to help better manage their plan:
Tip #1: It starts with an accurate and validated death audit.
Finding all decedents requires massive amounts of resources, skills and time – simply because there is no single reliable source. But missing just one death can cost thousands in overpayments and pensions are often unknowingly missing hundreds or thousands of deaths leading to millions in overpayments!
So, what can you do?
Find a death audit service that identifies the most deaths and provides validated results.
CertiCensus finds 38% more decedents than any other death audit service. How? It uses a proprietary algorithm and a team of experts to validate deaths, resulting in 96.5% decedent identification with 99.9% accuracy.
Tip #2: Keeping your data up to date makes you a participant advocate.
Participants are constantly moving or changing jobs. Keeping contact information up to date is a huge challenge. Reaching out via mailings and phone calls, CertiCensus searches for missing participants quarterly, so you don’t have to spend countless hours trying to find them.
When a participant dies, you need to locate or identify the beneficiary to fulfill your fiduciary responsibilities and pay them the benefits they are owed. CertiCensus finds 80% of spouse beneficiaries and a first-degree relative 95% of the time so beneficiaries receive the life changing benefits they need.
Tip#3: Free up time of team members by removing mailings and returned mail.
CertiCensus removes the time and burden of mailings and phone calls to locate missing participants and beneficiaries. CertiCensus manages the entire process including returned mail and sends one mandatory outbound mailing each year such as the Annual Funding Notice (AFN) or the Summary Annual Report (SAR).
Tip #4: Aligning with regulatory guidelines is easy with CertiCensus.
Staying in compliance is a never-ending challenge. CertiCensus helps you align with DOL search guidelines for finding missing participants. CertiCensus locates missing participants every three months, so you don’t have to waste countless hours trying to find them. Plus, CertiCensus provides documented due diligence with a full audit trail for each participant.
Learn more about CertiCensus from watching our recorded webinar Mastering Pension Management: Tips & Tricks to Make it Easier.
