Legislation aimed at giving the PBGC more money for distressed multiemployer pension funds by imposing fees on asset managers that want to keep managing retirement plan assets following criminal convictions was introduced Monday by Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis.
Money managers affiliated with financial institutions that have criminal convictions must get Department of Labor exemptions to continue serving retirement fund clients. In recent years, the DOL has granted such qualified professional asset manager, or QPAM, exemptions for money management units of Deutsche Bank, Citigroup, Barclays Capital, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and UBS Group, among others.
Ms. Baldwin is a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee and a co-sponsor of House-passed multiemployer pension fund reform legislation, the Butch Lewis Act, which has not been scheduled for Senate action.
Her proposed Pension Stability Act calls for the Department of Labor to create a fee structure for QPAM exemption applications, with a minimum $1 million fee per application that would be multiplied by the number of previous applications.
Those new revenues would be sent to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. to help reduce a multiemployer pension program deficit that was $54 billion at the end of fiscal year 2018.
"Financial institutions convicted of a crime should have to pay a penalty that will provide funding to support workers and retirees who saw massive cuts to their pensions through no fault of their own," Ms. Baldwin said in a statement. Her bill is supported by the Pension Rights Center.
