Nonresponsive Participants in Terminating DB Plan

[BH1528]

We are in the process of terminating a PBGC covered DB Plan. There are participants who we have not been able to get in contact with and have gone through a provider to do an employee search. We have exhausted all forms of communication (mail, phone, email) outside of showing up at the addresses provided and have not heard a thing. The phone numbers are disconnected or goes to a full mailbox of someone that is not the participant. The participant's lump sum value is above the $5K automatic cash out and all annuity providers we have reached out to have said that they will can't take on such a small amount. This is holding up the termination of the plan, what possible solutions are there to this?

[david rigby]

have you considered that:

1.  the participant may be deceased?

2.  the participant may not be a US citizen and has returned to his/her home country?

[ishi]

The PBGC has a missing participant's program:

https://www.pbgc.gov/prac/missing-participants-program

[BH1528]

@david rigby The search would have returned if the participants were deceased. The participants are US citizens but possibly moved to another country? I had not thought about that or if the search would look into that. Thank you.

@ishi Would we be able to use the missing participant's program? By definition, I am not sure if we can consider them missing as we do have an address and contact info: "In general, a distributee is considered missing if, when the plan closes out, the plan doesn’t know the individual’s location (e.g., if a notice from the plan is returned as undeliverable). For purposes of these instructions, we use the term “Unlocatable” to describe a distributee in this situation.P 1F 2 P An individual is also considered missing if: • The individual’s benefit was subject to a mandatory cash-out under the plan’s terms and the individual did not return the necessary paperwork providing instructions about how the payment should be made (e.g., by check or as a direct rollover to an IRA); or • The individual did not accept a lump sum payment, whether elected voluntarily or subject to mandatory cash-out (see “Unaccepted lump sum payments” below). We use the term “Unresponsive” to describe a distributee in either of the two situations noted immediately above. Note that a distributee may be both “Unlocatable” and “Unresponsive.”" It seems they would be considered Unresponsive and/or Unlocatable.