SSA Letter About Potential Retirement Benefits

[austin3515]

A participant received one of these letters in June 2015 - but we e-filed an SSA for this client in 2012 and included this participant as a D...

Anyone have this happen before? That's ridiculous!

[Lou S.]

Wait you expect the SSA to actually update their database?

We've had it happen on occasion. Very frustrating. Especially if it is a long dead ex-client or terminated plan.

[austin3515]

I think this meets the definition of insanity. it was EFILED for crying out loud.

[TPAMan]

The whole SSA reporting process is ridiculous! I have never seen an SSA letter connect anyone with a 'lost' benefit. Good luck!

[austin3515]

I figured out what happened. The SSA reporting was on an old Money Purchase plan merged into a 401k plan. Must not have used the C code to transfer the benefits to the new Plan #.

[SFSD]

Do you spend/waste a lot of time looking for benefits at an individual's request that have long been paid out?? Had this happen for a benefit we finally found was paid out over 15 years ago. EE didn't believe it and wanted a copy of the cashed check which wasn't available after all this time.

[My 2 cents]

Are the Social Security Administration's "You may be a winner" letters admissible to buttress an individual's claim for benefits if the sponsor says that their records do not show anything payable to the person who got the letter, along with instructions for finding the exit, leading to litigation?

How much of a case would someone have who just had an SSA letter? And if evidence (but not a cashed check) can be found to show that the benefit was already paid, wouldn't that be more than enough to resolve the case?

Is the records retention limit for a pension plan essentially infinite? How clearly does the sponsor have to show that something that happened 15-20 years ago actually happened?

[Lou S.]

Is the records retention limit for a pension plan essentially infinite? How clearly does the sponsor have to show that something that happened 15-20 years ago actually happened?

I believe ERISA requires you to maintain all records to determine benefit calculations or something like that. So yes essentially infinite. Or at least past the edge of the mortality table.

We had an ex-participant who found a quarterly statement from the late 1990s and wants to know where his money is. Of course it's a plan we took over in the mid 2000s that shows no record whatsoever of this individual in any plan records we have. The owners, management and anyone involved with the company that long ago have since changed hands and the prior record keeper has been defunct for many years so the older records are seemingly nowhere to be found.

I mean what do you do in a situation like that? It's pretty much a kin to the SSA "you may have benefits" letter.

We had one case on a terminated plan where where the woman had an SSA letter and we gave her a copy of her signed benefit election form and the 1009-R she received and she was still calling us asking where her money was. Again this was about 15 years after the plan had been terminated and the woman have been long since paid out. If it wasn't for electronic storage being so easy and cheap there is no way we as a service provider would have maintained those records on a terminated plan and the sponsor had long since gotten rid of everything they had as they retired the same time they closed the plan and shut down the company.

[ESOP Guy]

The whole SSA reporting process is ridiculous! I have never seen an SSA letter connect anyone with a 'lost' benefit. Good luck!

In almost 25 years of working in the DC field I have seen this letter lead to one person finding a benefit they forgot about. It was a DB plan benefit for a company that he had worked for in his 30's.