{"id":1925,"date":"2021-08-10T04:11:00","date_gmt":"2021-08-10T04:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.amalgamatedbenefits.com\/amalgamated-employee-benefits-administrators\/?p=1925"},"modified":"2022-08-03T20:29:54","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T20:29:54","slug":"monitor-internet-portals-estimating-employee-retirement-benefits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amalgamatedbenefits.com\/amalgamated-employee-benefits-administrators\/monitor-internet-portals-estimating-employee-retirement-benefits\/","title":{"rendered":"Monitor Internet Portals Estimating Employee Retirement Benefits"},"content":{"rendered":"
Recently, a court decision highlighted the importance of plan sponsors making certain that their member portals are being monitored on a regular basis for accuracy in conveying members\u2019 estimates of their defined benefit plan payments. This matter was highlighted in the case of Bafford v. Northrop Grumman Corp<\/em>., 9th<\/sup> Cir., 2021, a case brought by plan participants.<\/p>\n In an error uncovered by a new plan recordkeeper, the plan participants were told that the estimations of their benefits were significantly overstated, and where applicable, benefit payments had to be returned. This led to their bringing an action to retain the original benefit amounts received. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals responded to the claim in which the participants cited the plan sponsor\u2019s violation of its fiduciary duties under ERISA and negligence as follows:<\/p>\n In this case, the court agreed with the employer and administrative committee in dismissing the claim of a fiduciary breach. This, however, does not preclude the option of the participants resurrecting their claim for the employer and administrative committee\u2019s failure to provide an accurate benefit statement in response to a written request, as well as the negligence claim against the recordkeeper. The takeaway here is that plan sponsors and their administrators must be diligent in their monitoring of their employee benefit portals to ensure that they are providing accurate information consistent with the plan terms.<\/p>\n (Source: https:\/\/www.jdsupra.com\/legalnews\/employee-benefits-developments-may-2021-7263815\/<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Recently, a court decision highlighted the importance of plan sponsors making certain that their member portals are being monitored on a regular basis for accuracy in conveying members\u2019 estimates of their defined benefit plan payments. This matter was highlighted in the case of Bafford v. Northrop Grumman Corp., 9th Cir., 2021, a case brought by plan… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amalgamatedbenefits.com\/amalgamated-employee-benefits-administrators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1925"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amalgamatedbenefits.com\/amalgamated-employee-benefits-administrators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amalgamatedbenefits.com\/amalgamated-employee-benefits-administrators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amalgamatedbenefits.com\/amalgamated-employee-benefits-administrators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amalgamatedbenefits.com\/amalgamated-employee-benefits-administrators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1925"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.amalgamatedbenefits.com\/amalgamated-employee-benefits-administrators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1925\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2123,"href":"https:\/\/www.amalgamatedbenefits.com\/amalgamated-employee-benefits-administrators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1925\/revisions\/2123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amalgamatedbenefits.com\/amalgamated-employee-benefits-administrators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amalgamatedbenefits.com\/amalgamated-employee-benefits-administrators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amalgamatedbenefits.com\/amalgamated-employee-benefits-administrators\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n