Right to Privacy

[austin3515]

What protections does a participant have that his or her 401k information (in this case their balance) will be handled with discretion and kept private. I don't want to get into the specifics but suffice it to say I received a question from a participant (not of a client of mine) who is outraged that his information was shared with a third-party without his consent.

It was NOT disclosed in the context of services necessary to the administration of the Plan.

[hr for me]

It's good business practice and most HR/benefits employees should know better than to share , but I have to wonder who had it and who shared it? Does the participant know how the third party got the information? That's where I would start.

If it is an employee of the client, I would have the participant speak with that employee's boss and ask the reason why it was shared.

If it was the recordkeeper who passed the information on to an affiliated service, then the participant should opt out of that service.

But in the end, honestly, I don't know of any confidentiality laws for 401k's (unlike let's say ADA). But someone might have broken an employer or recordkeeper policy.

[QDROphile]

Protecting participant information is a fiduciary duty, but there are no articulated standards that I know of except with respect to matters relating to employer securities. Some things are obvious, such as not in appropriately authorizing disclosure of participant information and maintaining appropriate policies and supervision of company employees who carry out the administrative activities of the plan.

[Bill Presson]

Also, most firms have published privacy policies. Was the sharing in violation of your privacy policy?

[austin3515]

It's not a client, the question came from a friend. My friend was the person against whom the transgression was committed. It seems to me that if the company put an ad in the paper indicating what an employee's account balance was, that must be in violation of some law.

That is not what happened here, but whatever law would prevent that would be what I'm looking for. I did some searching on a fiduciary duty of privacy and/or confidentiality but found nothing.

[Bill Presson]

https://epic.org/privacy/rfpa

See if that gives you anything.

PS: no idea how to post a link on here anymore. Glad that was a short one so I typed it.

I've tried to use the "link" icon on the menu several times, but I'm not smart enough to figure it out anymore.

[GMK]

One way to post a link is to copy and paste with the little switch in the upper left hand corner of the "Reply to this topic" window switched up. Then switch it back down for all the deluxe word processing options.

[Bill Presson]

Thanks, GMK. That was the item I was missing.