BENEFITS DIGEST

The boards of 22 multiemployer plans, from foundry workers to food terminal employees, say the PBGC has kept them from applying for the special financial assistance Congress funded in the American Rescue Plan. Congress told the agency to process every application within 120 days; the funds say they have sat on a waitlist for more than a year without being allowed to file at all. The complaint also attacks the PBGC's position that terminated plans are ineligible, which the Second Circuit struck down in the Bakery Drivers case, now the subject of the agency's pending Supreme Court petition. The plans asked for a preliminary injunction and an expedited hearing the day they filed, and the docket has not slowed for the calendar. The court entered a scheduling order on Labor Day.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation has relaunched its opinion letter program, giving employers, plan sponsors, unions, and practitioners a channel to ask the agency's Office of the General Counsel how Title IV of ERISA applies to specific situations. Requests may be submitted anonymously through counsel, opinions bind only the requester, and the program excludes matters in litigation, coverage determinations, and issues pending in rulemaking. The agency's first opinion letter since 2002 issued in June, finding that annuity buyouts of frozen plan participants do not trigger section 4043 reporting.

The agency raised rates that pension plans and multiemployer plans use for valuation and funding purposes.

Milliman explains why the PBGC’s new Coverage Assessment Program matters especially for professional service firms, whose defined benefit plans often sit under unique coverage rules.

PBGC filed a comment letter supporting FASB's proposal to discount qualifying market return cash balance obligations at the plan's assumed interest crediting rate. An accounting change rather than a compliance obligation, but one that would move reported pension obligations for hybrid plans.

The PBGC settled a Title VII promotion-discrimination claim brought by one of its own employees.

In an unpublished memorandum, the Ninth Circuit affirmed an arbitration award holding that a multiemployer plan actuary's use of PBGC-published interest rate assumptions to calculate withdrawal liability violated ERISA's requirement that assumptions represent the actuary's best estimate of anticipated experience. The plan's 7 percent minimum funding rate applied instead. See The Second Thing above.

A pilot becomes policy: employers considering a defined benefit plan can now ask PBGC for a coverage determination before establishing the plan, removing a source of uncertainty for church-affiliated, professional-service, and Puerto Rico plan sponsors.

On July 20, 2026, the PBGC proposed a framework modernizing how it calculates and enforces penalties for late required notices and filings, with daily penalty schedules ranging from $25 to $1,000 by violation severity and reductions or waivers for reasonable cause and self-correction. Plan sponsors should revisit compliance procedures for reportable events and section 4010 filings, as PBGC has ended its informal nonenforcement posture in these areas.

On June 15, 2026, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (“PBGC”) issued an opinion addressing whether an annuity buyout that reduces active headcount by 20% or more would trigger a reportable event.

This proposed rule would provide the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation's policies for calculating, imposing, and waiving monetary penalties to pension plans for failure to provide certain required notices or other material information timely to PBGC and plan participants.

Background Under ERISA section 4043, defined benefit plan administrators must notify PBGC when certain “reportable events” occur. One of those events is a reduction in the active participant headcount.

(PBGC) is requesting that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) approve, under the Paperwork Reduction Act, a new collection of information. The purpose