Participant Address Changes

[Guest buttercup]

How do you require that a participant put in a change of address? We currently have the participant put it in writing and forward it to us. We have a new employee here who thinks that it would be better to have the change of address come thru the employer... what do you all think??

[WDIK]

I think this might be one of those situations where I can make the client happy by doing as they request, because it doesn't really seem like a big deal either way.

[maverick]

A large daily shop once told me the reason they require address changes to come from the employer is that participants think that telling the tpa is all they have to do. So, in the future when the employer mails something to the employee (W-2, employee newsletter, bonus check, whatever), the correspondence is returned as non-deliverable. The employee is called in and asked about his/her mailing address and the reply is "I told XYZ tpa several months ago.". Makes sense to me, but I'm sure there are reasons for letting the employee communicate address changes directly to the tpa.

One other thing. That large tpa shop said they did not want to get in the business of informing the employer when an employee submitted the address change -- another reason for not acting on employee requests.

Maverick

[papogi]

Many employers send eligibility to TPA's via electronic means, and if a TPA changes an address based on a participant request, if this is also not changed on the employer's side, the next file load could overwrite the manual change made by the TPA. In a self-funded world with a TPA, it can be argued that the eligibility is owned by the plan sponsor. A policy where all changes come from the employer is not a bad one for a TPA to have.