I am requesting that your newspaper publish this letter pointing out that retirees should be protected from pension overpayment recoupment. When retirees receive their first pension check, they trust the amount shown on the check will be what they should receive monthly.
Far too often, pension plan sponsors later find an error in the pension payment calculation and force retirees to pay back thousands of dollars and suffer a large cut in benefits as well.
Employee Retirement Income Security Act and Department of Treasury guidance requires plan sponsors to follow vague rules in deciding a dollar amount and reasonable time required to recoup overpayments. There is a need for a more equitable approach to recouping pension overpayments.
The National Retiree Legislative Network has proposed to indemnify individual plan participants from the requirement to fund overpayments with a more equitable remedy that would instruct actuaries to account for recoupment as a plan funding risk and require a very small adjustments to plan actuarial calculations. Currently, actuarial adjustments are already used to cover other miscalculation errors.
Request more information on this issue at contact@nrln.org or call toll-free 866-360-7197.
Dino Costas
Lewes
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