SAR to terminated participants (Retirement & H/W)

Seeing as how SAR's are distributed many months after the end of the plan year, to what extent do Plan Sponsors need to provide the SAR in the following instances:

1 - retirement plan where the terminated vested participant has zeroed out their account since the plan year end.

2 - health and welfare plan COBRA participant who is no longer on COBRA

Here’s an earlier discussion:

After, the Supreme Court decided Intel Corp. Investment Policy Committee v. Sulyma, No. 18-1116, 589 U.S. ___, 140 S. Ct. 768, 2020 Empl. Benefits Cas. (BL) 69188, 2020 U.S. LEXIS 1367, 2020 WL 908881 (Feb. 26, 2020).  The Court held that merely receiving a communication does not mean the recipient has knowledge of the information in it.  Rather, to get ERISA § 413(2)’s shorter statute of limitations, a defendant must prove the plaintiff’s actual knowledge.  The protection a plan’s fiduciaries might get by “over-delivering” a summary annual report is now much less.

Here’s the ambiguous rule:

https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?SID=0ef9bcffad94c1b0a2d036c698113b2f&mc=true&node=se29.9.2520_1104b_610&rgn=div8

for clarification I'm talking about ongoing active plans.

Yes, the earlier discussion was about a terminated plan, and I saw your question is about continuing plans.

The rule is ambiguous in either situation.  Even for a continuing plan, there are at least three interpretations.

To resolve the ambiguity in particular circumstances, a plan’s administrator should use no less care, skill, prudence, and diligence than would be used by a prudent person experienced in managing an employee-benefit plan of the same kind for the exclusive purpose of providing the plan’s benefits.

In considering whether to deliver a summary annual report to someone who no longer is a participant but was at some possibly relevant time, a fiduciary might consider whether the plan is or isn’t burdened by an incremental expense for the delivery.

And if a plan’s administrator has contracted a service provider to deliver a summary annual report, the administrator might consider what’s feasible within the contracted services.