The Labor Department’s Employee Benefits Security Administration recovered nearly $1.4 billion in direct payment to plans, participants and beneficiaries in fiscal year 2024, the agency announced in a recent fact sheet.
EBSA, which oversees ERISA-covered retirement plans, recovered nearly $742 million of that total from enforcement actions filed during the fiscal year, according to the fact sheet released Jan. 17.
The agency closed 729 civil investigations in fiscal year 2024, 514 of which produced monetary results for plans or other corrective action, the fact sheet said. A large portion of the results helped terminated vested participants, or individuals who left their employer but are still entitled to benefits from their retirement plan.
Specifically, “EBSA’s enforcement program helped 9,170 terminated vested participants in defined benefit pension plans collect benefits of $432.6 million owed to them,” according to the fact sheet.
The enforcement programs also took nonmonetary action in some civil cases, resulting in the removal of 12 fiduciaries, the barring of 27 individuals from serving as fiduciaries and the appointing of 23 independent fiduciaries, among other things.
Additionally, the agency helped recover about $544 million in benefits for workers and their families through informal complaint resolution, which is when EBSA helps resolve an individual’s issue with a plan through an EBSA Benefit Advisor, the fact sheet said.
Separately, the agency recovered $53.5 million through its Abandoned Plan Program — which facilitates ending individual account pension plans that have been abandoned by sponsoring employers and distributing the plans’ benefits — and $44.5 million through its Voluntary Fiduciary Correction Program, in which plan officials can self-report ERISA violations and remedy them without becoming the target of an enforcement action.
Over the last fiscal year, the agency closed 1,322 applications, approving terminations, in its Abandoned Plan Program and 1,162 applications in its Voluntary Fiduciary Correction Program, according to the fact sheet.