The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, which insures private-sector pensions, wants to move the penalty policies it has used since 1995 into formal regulations, and commenters are asking it to distinguish promptly corrected mistakes from serious failures. The July proposal keeps the familiar framework, in Marsh's summary more or less the old policy made official, including $25 a day for the first 90 days a required notice is late and $50 a day after that, now indexed for inflation. The Wagner Law Group's comment letter, from Harold Ashner and Israel Goldowitz, who helped write the 1995 policies, asks the agency to consider whether a sponsor exercised ordinary business care in hiring and overseeing the advisers who prepare most filings, to weigh whether a violation caused any actual harm, and to answer first-time, promptly corrected, harmless mistakes with written warnings rather than daily fines. Comments closed September 21. The number of covered single-employer plans has fallen about 25 percent since 2005, and penalty exposure is one more line in the cost of keeping a defined benefit plan open.

Without changes in law, the Congressional Budget Office projects that Social Security's retirement trust fund will run out in mid-2032, leaving incoming revenue insufficient to pay scheduled benefits in full. The updated projections, released September 17, put the cut at that point at 26 percent, deeper than the 22 percent in the trustees' June report, and widening to 40 percent by the end of the century. Against today's average retired-worker benefit of $2,087.52 a month, a 26 percent cut is about $543 a month, more than $6,500 a year. Even the standard fallback, merging the retirement fund with the healthier disability fund, buys one year and still leaves a projected 23 percent cut. For plan sponsors this is an education problem before it is a policy one. Workers modeling retirement income on full scheduled benefits are counting on payments current law cannot fully fund past 2032, which makes the workplace plan's income projections, and the assumptions behind them, worth a check.

Senate Finance ranking member Ron Wyden introduced S. 5507 on Thursday to enlarge the saver's match before it starts. The match, created by SECURE 2.0, deposits a federal matching contribution directly into a saver's IRA or workplace plan account. Under current law it pays 50 percent of the first $2,000 contributed, a maximum of $1,000, phasing out between $41,000 and $71,000 of income on a joint return. The bill would double the rate to 100 percent, raise the maximum to $2,000 a year, index it, treat the match as Roth money, and lift the joint phase-out range to $85,000 through $115,000. The existing match is scheduled to begin in 2027. Wyden's bill would make it more generous, but it has not become law, and with the Senate out until after the election no action is expected soon. Recordkeepers are already building for the 2027 launch, and sponsors will field participant questions about the match either way.

A Colorado father sued Cigna and Musarubra US, the sponsor of his family's self-funded health plan, on September 22 over denials of his teenage son's residential mental health treatment. The son, identified as J.S., had ADHD, depression, anxiety, substance use, and a Xanax and alcohol overdose about a week before his family placed him in a Utah wilderness therapy program. Cigna's denials shifted, per the complaint: first no authorization on file, then experimental and investigational, then an appeal rejected as untimely. The residential placement that followed was denied as not medically necessary, and the requested external review was never completed on time. The family alleges that Cigna demanded signs of an immediate crisis before covering residential treatment, even though the plan covered care for patients who need round-the-clock treatment without acute hospitalization. The suit seeks the unpaid benefits plus an injunction against applying acute-care criteria to sub-acute claims and an order requiring disclosure of the guidelines behind denials. These are allegations, and Cigna has not yet responded. Medical-necessity review and exclusions are the areas EBSA told its investigators to prioritize this month. Sponsors should ask how their claims administrator decides whether residential mental health treatment is medically necessary and whether those criteria match the plan's coverage.

Employers that charge tobacco users more for health coverage have received some enforcement relief from federal agencies. The August FAQs from the Labor Department, HHS, and Treasury say the agencies will not enforce the requirement to pay the full wellness reward retroactively to workers who quit tobacco midyear, and they narrow which materials must explain the reasonable alternative, another way to earn the reward, such as completing a tobacco-cessation program. But the agencies' decision doesn't prevent employee lawsuits, as Marsh's alert explains. More than 75 lawsuits over tobacco surcharges are pending, appeals are before five federal appeals courts, and plaintiffs are also arguing that the underlying wellness rules are invalid. Programs should keep the reasonable alternative real: offer it, honor it, and disclose it. The FAQs changed the government's posture, not the law private plaintiffs sue under.

Fixed-indemnity insurance pays a set cash amount for a covered event, such as a hospital stay, and it has a legitimate place as an excepted benefit. Marsh's alert covers two developments. A federal court has invalidated the consumer-notice requirement the 2024 federal rule imposed on fixed-indemnity policies, so those notices are no longer required. And the tax warning stands: some vendors promise payroll-tax savings through wellness programs that pay supposedly tax-free cash benefits even when employees have no unreimbursed medical expenses, and the IRS says those arrangements don't deliver the promised tax treatment. Marsh's analysis walks through where the line sits.

Changes to the federal surprise-billing arbitration process are taking effect in stages. The federal administrative fee fell from $115 to $15 per party for disputes initiated on or after June 11. New requirements for codes explaining claim payments and denials apply to services furnished beginning January 1, 2027. Other changes, including plan registration and moving negotiations into the federal portal, follow separate implementation schedules, and CMS is launching audits of the certified arbitration entities amid questions about arbitrator bias. Seyfarth's alert walks through the operational side for plan sponsors. On the legal side, Troutman Pepper Locke explains the Second Circuit's ruling that providers cannot sue under the No Surprises Act to collect unpaid arbitration awards, because Congress gave enforcement to the agencies. One Maryland district court has disagreed, and appeals raising the question are pending in other circuits, including the Ninth Circuit's SpecialtyCare v. Kaiser. Providers are also turning to state-law collection theories, which three district courts have already rejected. Ask your administrator which requirements are already in effect and whether its systems meet them.

KFF's updated fact sheet gathers the paid-leave patchwork in one place: 82 percent of workers had employer-provided paid sick leave in 2025, but only 27 percent had paid family leave at last measure, and just 56 percent of the workforce is even eligible for unpaid FMLA leave. Eighteen states plus D.C. and 18 localities now mandate paid sick leave, while 14 states and D.C. have paid family and medical leave programs, Virginia this year becoming the first southern state to enact one. Durations run 6 to 52 weeks for a worker's own condition and 8 to 12 for family care, with wage replacement from 50 to 100 percent under varying caps and eligibility rules. For multistate employers the map is the point, and it is moving in both directions at once: D.C.'s benefit cuts take effect Thursday, and the Pittsburgh area votes today on a new parental leave mandate.

Employees can lose valuable stock options by missing the exercise deadline, especially after leaving a job, and Cohen & Buckmann writes for both sides of that problem. For companies, expirations create avoidable employee-relations, tax, securities, and administrative problems, and the menu of fixes differs by ownership. Private companies can offer net exercise, loans, repurchase windows, or introductions to secondary buyers, each with cash and disclosure costs, while public companies increasingly set expiring in-the-money options, those that let the employee buy shares for less than their current value, to exercise automatically. Two traps get special attention: an option expiring while the company has no current valuation of its shares leaves both sides guessing at taxes, and a departing employee's post-termination exercise window can shrink a ten-year option to a few months of decision time. For executives the advice is a checklist: before resigning, confirm the expiration date, how many options they can exercise, and the exercise mechanics, and remember the tax due at exercise can far exceed the exercise price.

Williams Mullen extends its year-end checklist series to governmental and church plans outside ERISA. Amendment deadlines depend on the type of plan and the change involved: for many nongovernmental plans, amendments documenting optional SECURE and SECURE 2.0 features already in use are due December 31, 2026, while required amendments can have later deadlines and governmental plans generally have additional time, a distinction the IRS clarified this month. Sponsors should document operational changes now so the eventual amendment matches how the plan actually works. The Roth catch-up requirement for participants whose prior-year FICA wages topped $150,000 applies for 2026 and rewards a payroll-system check. Also on the list: the IRS now issues determination letters for individually designed 403(b) plans, and the 2023 proposed forfeiture regulations, which generally require defined contribution forfeitures to be used within 12 months after the close of the plan year in which they arise, can be relied on now.

Milliman's annual market survey puts group disability and statutory leave coverage at $24.4 billion of in-force premium for 2025, up from $23.4 billion, with paid family and medical leave the fastest growing piece at 8.7 percent. The sales picture is softer. New sales premium fell from $3.2 billion to $3.0 billion, long-term disability sales dropped 6.6 percent, and paid family and medical leave sales dropped 20.3 percent, while average new-business premium per covered life rose 15.9 percent for long-term disability coverage. For employers, the survey is context for disability and statutory leave renewals.