PBGC Paid Nearly $6B to Retirees in ’16

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) had a busy year in 2016. High on the agenda was the nearly $6 billion it paid to almost 840,000 retirees in more than 4,700 failed single-employer plans, but that was not all it was up to.

The Trump administration’s fiscal year 2018 budget proposal includes information on what the federal funding and premiums it receives provided paid for in 2016.

Highlights of the PBGC’s 2016 activities include:

• helping to protect 55,000 people by encouraging companies to keep their plans when they emerged from bankruptcy;

• negotiating $3 billion to protect more than 367,000 whose plans were at risk;

• reviewing plan sponsor calculations for plans that end through standard terminations, resulting in almost 940 participants receiving corrected benefit amounts totaling $4.5 million;

• assuming responsibility for more than 46,000 people in 76 trusteed single-employer plans; and

• providing $113 million in financial assistance to 65 multiemployer pension plans covering the benefits of 59,000 participants (an additional 27,000 workers in these multiemployer plans will receive guaranteed benefits when they retire).

The PBGC guarantees payment of basic pension benefits earned by more than 40 million U.S. workers. The single-employer program protects about 30 million workers and retirees in more than 22,000 pension plans.