Understanding Your Summary Plan Descriptions

Learn to navigate SPD regulations, improve employee communication, ensure compliance, and avoid costly legal issues in your organization.

This program will assist you to follow the SPD regulations to avoid legal liability for your plan and organization and provide better communication with your employees and beneficiaries. The ERISA requirement for distribution of a Summary Plan Description (SPD) may be dismissed as a regulatory, legal requirement, similar to legal disclaimers that we ignore every day in all facets of daily life. However, the SPD is intended to be a communication describing eligibility and benefits requirements to your employees and beneficiaries in layman's or common language. It should be viewed as an opportunity to communicate clearly with your plan's beneficiaries. The SPD is not just a regulatory box to check, but should be considered as an opportunity to clearly and concisely educate your employees and beneficiaries. On the flipside, failure to adequately describe the benefits to your employees can cause extra expense, and even lawsuits, that could have been avoided if the beneficiaries understood the plan's requirements up front. Conflicting language between the SPD and other plan documents can cause confusion, complaints and excess expenses. This program will review the complex content and distribution requirements of the SPD to allow you to review your own processes and SPD contents for compliance. Electronic distribution of the SPD is common in this age of email, electronic enrollment and website posting and seems like it would be a simple endeavor. However, the ERISA regulations for electronic distribution are surprisingly complex and filled with recordkeeping requirements that can trip up the unknowledgeable employer or administrator. We will discuss the electronic distribution requirements in detail and review safe harbor requirements. This program will review some recent court decisions related to SPD distribution, requests for information, and clarity of plan terms and educate you on how to avoid these lawsuits in your organization. Finally, we will discuss the difference between the SPD and the Plan document, their coordination, and how courts enforce and interpret these two documents.

Faculty

Linda Stuessi

The Wagner Law Group