Try and Find Me: How Do You Locate a Missing Participant?

Plan sponsors, administrators, and even qualified termination administrators may need to locate missing participants or beneficiaries. It may be time for the required minimum distribution to begin or pay a designated beneficiary. The employee may have terminated decades ago. Even correction of a plan failure under the Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System may require payment of additional benefits to terminated participants. Using commercial locator services, credit reporting agencies, or internet searches are some effective methods of locating lost participants. Having a process is paramount to showing fiduciary due diligence.

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Related Content

• Missing Participants Best Practices Checklist
  Reference this checklist when advising plan sponsors and plan fiduciaries what steps they can take to identify and locate missing participants in employee benefit plans. Consistent with their obligations of prudence and loyalty under ERISA, plan fiduciaries must apply reasonable efforts in locating missing participants and beneficiaries who are due benefits under a plan.

• Missing Participants Policy and Procedures (Qualified Retirement Plan)
  Suggest that your retirement plan sponsors adopt and tailor for their use this Missing Participants Policy and Procedures to establish a process to identify and locate missing plan participants.

Practical Guidance Updates 
Featuring the latest updates from your Practical Guidance account.      

• Employee Benefits & Executive Compensation Key Legal Developments Tracker (Current)
  Stay informed on new developments.
  • Retirement Plans. DOL recently issued a request for comments proposing to collect information voluntarily to establish the Retirement Savings Lost and Found online searchable database described in section 523 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and to connect missing participants and other individuals who have lost track of their retirement benefits with such benefits. Comments were to be submitted by June 17, 2024. 89 Fed. Reg. 26932 (Apr. 16, 2024).
• Health and Welfare Plans. S. Supreme Court preserved the FDA approval and current regimen for mifepristone. In a unanimous decision, the Court dismissed a challenge to the FDA’s protocol for prescribing and dispensing the drug on procedural grounds. FDA v. All. for Hippocratic Med., Nos. 23-235, 23-236, 2024 U.S. LEXIS 2604 (June 13, 2024).
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