On October 17, 2023, the Alliance for Retired Americans held its annual Preparing for Retirement Symposium: Individual and Collective Efforts. The event brought together government officials, labor movement leaders, policy experts, Social Security and pension advocates, academics, attorneys, and economists to discuss retirement security and social insurance issues.

One of the topics covered at the symposium was the $1 trillion in individual pension plan accounts that have been abandoned by their sponsoring employers. Senior officials from the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL’s), Philadelphia Regional Office and Washington, DC District Office discussed the PBGC’s Missing Participants Program and DOL’s efforts to recover retirement funds beneficiaries did not know about or have lost track of.

These funds may be owed to you or your surviving spouse or heir who worked for a company that was eliminated from a retirement plan — if you have the proper documentation proving that you were a plan participant or are the heir to a participant.

If you earned a retirement benefit from a private-sector employer who lost track of you when your plan ended, your employer may have transferred those benefits to PBGC for safekeeping.

PBGC holds unclaimed benefits for people that were not paid when their retirement plan ended. To help connect them to their benefit, PBGC has created a searchable database. More information from PBGC is available by calling 1-800-400-7242 or by emailing [email protected]. Additional information is available at Find unclaimed retirement benefits | Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

In addition, the U.S. Department of Labor Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) Abandoned Plan Program facilitates the termination of, and distribution of benefits from, individual account pension and defined contribution plans that have been abandoned by their sponsoring employers.

Retirement and health benefit plans can be difficult to navigate. Contact EBSA's Benefits Advisors to get answers fast by calling 1-866-444-3272 or https://www.askebsa.dol.gov/WebIntake. Translation and relay services are available. You can also find more information at: Abandoned Plans | U.S. Department of Labor.

The Alliance for Retired Americans will provide further information about this topic at our 2024 Retirement Symposium in November.

If you have questions about the symposium, please contact me at [email protected].

Sincerely,

Robert Roach, Jr.

President, Alliance for Retired Americans