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Strategic Objective
Improve health benefits and retirement security for all workers
Strategic Objective
Overview
The Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), through its enforcement of Title I of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and related health benefits laws, protects the security of retirement and health plan benefits and assets for all workers who have employer-sponsored plans. The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) is a government corporation created to encourage the continuation and maintenance of private sector defined-benefit pension plans, provide timely and uninterrupted payment of pension benefits, and keep pension insurance premiums at a minimum.
Read Less...Progress Update
The Department of Labor, in consultation with the Office of Management and Budget, has determined that performance toward this objective is making noteworthy progress. The Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) supports this objective by enforcing Title I of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and related health benefits laws.
In FY 2015, EBSA implemented three timeliness measures designed to increase the effectiveness of the enforcement program while avoiding reliance on raw case numbers. EBSA focused its FY 2015 enforcement resources on National Projects and the Major Case Enforcement Priority. In increasing the investigative time spent on Major Cases, a significant portion of the agency’s enforcement resources were concentrated on those cases likely to have the greatest impact on the protection of plan assets and participants’ benefits. Major Cases that were closed in FY 2015 resulted in approximately $186.8M in monetary results. Over the same period, the non-Major cases that were closed resulted in approximately $78.4M in monetary results, and Benefit Advisor recoveries (through informal resolution) were $402.9M.
Given the number of plans that the agency oversees relative to the number of its investigators, EBSA has to leverage its available resources by focusing on investigations that it believes will most likely result in the deterrence, detection, and correction of ERISA violations. To that end, EBSA created the Sample Investigation Program (SIP) to measure overall compliance with the civil provisions of ERISA and the impact of EBSA investigations on compliance rates of investigated employee benefit plans. In FY 2015, EBSA continued to analyze the compliance data available to the agency and use lessons learned to improve the SIP as well as the overall enforcement program. EBSA has begun to focus on specific compliance issues of special importance to the integrity of plans and plan benefits. For instance, EBSA initiated a bonding compliance project in FY 2015 that will continue into FY 2016.
