Phyllis Borzi, the head of the Employee Benefits Security Administration, said Tuesday that the Department of Labor is about to start a major push to get pension plans to find lost beneficiaries.

She called their current lack of effort “disturbing.”

Borzi revealed that in a pilot Philadelphia project, DOL workers were able to recover $1 billion for terminated vested plan participants in just 10 to 15 minutes per beneficiary on the web and elsewhere.

She said the office will publish the ways it found most effective at locating the beneficiaries.

Some of the participants found were owed hundreds of thousands of dollars, said Borzi, speaking at the American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries’ annual conference in suburban Washington, D.C.

However, Tom Reeder, director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, told the group that some people don’t want to be found. Someone in a witness protection program freaked out when the PBGC located him, Reeder said.

Looking at her agenda from now until the end of the Obama administration in January, Borzi said three sets of frequently asked questions on the fiduciary rule will be coming out by the end of the year.

The first will be on the best interest contract exemptions, followed by FAQs on definitions and then miscellaneous exemption issues.

She told the pension industry professionals at the conference that the FAQs will be helpful, but not encyclopedic.

“We’re not going to be able to answer every question,” said Borzi.

First « 1 2 » Next