The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. approved $183 million in special financial assistance to another struggling multiemployer pension plan.
Southwest Ohio Regional Council of Carpenters Pension Plan will receive the funds under the Special Financial Assistance Program, the PBGC announced Tuesday.
The plan is based in Monroe, Ohio, and covers 5,399 participants in the construction industry. In 2019, it implemented a benefit suspension under the terms of the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 to address its troubled financial condition at that time and its projected insolvency. The plan reduced benefits by an average of 18% for roughly 4,300 plan participants, according to a PBGC news release.
The SFA funds will enable the plan to restore benefits suspended under the terms of MPRA, make payments to retirees to cover prior benefit suspensions and pay retirement benefits without reduction for many years into the future, the PBGC said.
The plan had a funding ratio of 63% with $386 million in projected benefit obligations as of Jan. 1, 2021, according to the plan's most recent Form 5500 filing. As of Dec. 31, 2021, the plan had $269 million in assets, the filing showed.
As of Tuesday, the PBGC has approved nearly $52.4 billion in SFA funds to plans that cover more than 756,000 workers, retirees and beneficiaries. Created by the American Rescue Plan Act that Democrats passed in March 2021, the SFA Program is designed to shore up struggling multiemployer pension plans through 2051.
