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The ERISA Outline Book is probably the most comprehensive and trustworthy series, so it is an indispensable resource for an ERISA practitioner. However, if you manage a single plan and it is only part of your job as an employee at a company that sponsors that plan, then perhaps you want a shorter and more digestible resource that you can use to more easily tackle common problems, leaving the complex ERISA research to your ERISA counsel. In that case, the 401(k) Answer Book may be a better fit.

I would not lose sleep over a plan with no non-key employees that did not make an employer contribution.

However, building on MoJo's points, if the plans merged, there is no more Company B 401(k) Plan which could terminate post-merger and there is no violation of the successor plan rule. Therefore, there would be no need to do a VCP filing. So the crux of our points is: what merged and when, the companies, the plans, etc?

Take a look at the IRS "401(k) Plan Fix-It Guide - The plan was top-heavy and required minimum contributions were not made to the plan." It suggests that the correction for a failure to make a top-heavy contribution for a plan year is to make the top-heavy contribution to non-key employees. https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/401k-plan-fix-it-guide-the-plan-was-top-heavy-and-required-minimum-contributions-were-not-made-to-the-plan

It should have been used each year!! Not accumulated.

EOB is (or can be) web based as well. We use both.

Even if neither cybersecurity insurance nor fiduciary liability insurance is statute-prescribed, fidelity-bond insurance is. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 makes it a fiduciary breach (and a Federal crime) for a person to handle plan assets or serve as a plan’s fiduciary unless the person is “bonded” with sufficient ERISA fidelity-bond insurance. (Perhaps because both labels begin with the letter “F” and use a word derived from Latin, many people confuse fidelity-bond insurance and fiduciary liability insurance. They are different kinds of insurance for different losses. Fidelity-bond insurance covers a theft.) The minimum fidelity-bond insurance coverage ERISA expressly requires is 10% of the amount the covered person handles, except that the statute ordinarily does not expressly require more than $500,000 or, if the plan holds employer securities or is a pooled-employer plan, $1 million; and requires at least $1,000 (even if the amount the covered person handles is less than $10,000). Fidelity-bond insurance is a plan’s expense, which may be paid from the plan’s assets. A fiduciary who knows another fiduciary breached a duty to get fidelity-bond insurance, or to require an employee, agent, or other service provider to be bonded, is liable for not making reasonable efforts to remedy the other fiduciary’s breach. That liability might include restoring the plan’s loss that would have been insured. ERISA permits, but does not require, fiduciary liability insurance. A fiduciary must at least consider obtaining this insurance, and should buy it if in the plan’s circumstances an experienced fiduciary acting with the care, skill, prudence, and diligence ERISA requires would do so. A retirement plan may buy fiduciary liability insurance “if such insurance permits recourse by the insurer against the fiduciary in case of a breach of a fiduciary obligation by such fiduciary.” If the insurance contract permits (or at least does not preclude) the insurer’s recourse against a breaching fiduciary, the “premium”—insurance jargon for the price one pays for insurance coverage—may be paid by the plan. If an insurance contract precludes recourse against a breaching fiduciary, a retirement plan cannot pay the portion of the insurance price that is attributable to the non-recourse provision. An insurer might allow more than one payer to pay the insurance price, and might, for the payers’ convenience, allocate the overall price into portions—a price attributable to the incremental value of the non-recourse provision, which is the price to be paid by a person other than the plan; and a price that is the difference between the total price and the price of the non-recourse provision—that is, the portion of the price that can be paid from a plan’s assets without violating ERISA. For more information, see chapter 6 in ERISA: A Comprehensive Guide (Wolters Kluwer).

There is no one right answer that is going to apply to all employers. It depends on this particular employer's appetite for risk, their assessment of the likelihood of experiencing a covered loss, and their ability to cover losses without regard to the insurance. Cyber security insurance is strongly recommended, however there is no need that the insurance be obtained from the same vendor that provides their ERISA fidelity bond. The employer might want to see if they already have insurance that would cover cyber-related losses to the plan, or consider shopping around before making a decision.

I have a plan terminating that had about $20k in the Forfeiture Account. They used some of it to pay plan expenses, but even after that there's about $12k left in there. So who does that money get split up between? Is it: Anyone still actively employed at the time of termination (I believe it was just the owner) Any person who had a balance at the time of termination