The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.'s multiemployer and single-employer pension plan programs improved their financial positions over the past year, according to the agency's Fiscal Year 2022 Annual Report.
The report, which was released Tuesday, shows that the PBGC's multiemployer program had a positive net position of $1.1 billion at the end of fiscal year 2022, increasing by $577 million from the previous year. The agency's single-employer program achieved a positive net position of $36.6 billion, reflecting a $5.7 billion increase from the end of fiscal year 2021.
"For the second year in a row, PBGC's insurance programs are both reporting positive net financial positions," PBGC Director Gordon Hartogensis said in a news release. "The agency remains committed to implementing the Special Financial Assistance Program and ensuring that millions of America's workers, retirees and their families receive the pension benefits they earned through many years of hard work."
The Special Financial Assistance Program, or SFA program, was established under the American Rescue Plan Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in March 2021. The program enables the PBGC to provide funding for struggling multiemployer plans, and in fiscal year 2022, the agency approved 30 applications for $7.6 billion in SFA, according to the report.
Before the American Rescue Plan Act became law, the PBGC's multiemployer program was expected to become insolvent by 2026, but is now likely to remain solvent for more than 40 years. As of Sept. 30, the program had $3.5 billion in assets and $2.4 billion in liabilities, the report found. The agency also gave $226 million in traditional financial assistance to 115 multiemployer plans during fiscal year 2022, covering more than 93,500 participants.
The agency's single-employer program had $124.4 billion in assets and $87.8 billion in liabilities as of Sept. 30. The report shows that in fiscal year 2022, the PBGC made benefit payments of over $7 billion to more than 960,000 retirees in terminated single-employer plans. The agency also assumed responsibility for paying benefits to nearly 8,000 current and future retirees in 32 single-employer plans, which were trusteed in fiscal year 2022.
