Visit Our Website  
Pension Action Center | Gerontology Institute 
The Pension Action Center has:
  • Helped over 8,300 workers and retirees 
  • Recovered more than $55 million in benefits
In This Issue
Retirees who live in, or worked in, Illinois can rest assured that they will continue to have access to free pension counseling services thanks to a fifth year of funding from The Retirement Research Foundation. The Pension Action Center was recently notified that it is to receive a grant of over $124,000 in October of 2016 from the RRF to continue this important work.

The Pension Action Center began the Illinois Pension Assistance Project in July of 2012 through a grant from the RRF. To date, the Illinois Pension Assistance Project has served over 900 people and recovered over $2.5 million in benefits. This work has been funded through grants from the RRF and from the U.S. Administration for Community Living/Administration on Aging.



 
bThe PBGC and Omitted Participants
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation is an agency which guarantees the benefits payable by defined benefit pension plans when those plans fail or are terminated. When the plan has insufficient assets to pay all the benefits it owes, the PBGC actually steps in and directly pays those benefits to the retirees. In cases where the plan is deemed to have sufficient assets, the PBGC plays a much smaller role. In these cases, called "standard terminations", it allows the plan to either pay out immediate lump sums or to buy an annuity with an insurance company to pay the retirees' benefits when those retirees reach retirement age. In most of these cases, the PBGC relies on the employer's records that it has paid out, or bought an annuity for, everyone who is vested under the plan.

What happens if the pension plan has made mistakes, if its records are incomplete, and fail to take into account everyone who is due a benefit under the terminating plan? Two of our recent cases illustrate just that point.


 
eCounselors Honored
Counselors Honored at Volunteer Luncheon
On August 18th, the Pension Action Center held its annual Volunteer Luncheon at the Venezia Restaurant in Dorchester. At this luncheon, the Project honored three extraordinary individuals: Maureen Egan; Susan Hart; and Frank Daley. They have worked with us this past year (and for a number of previous years) doing the hard work of finding lost pensions and helping clients obtain the benefits they deserve. As many readers of this newsletter may know, each of our counselors is a dedicated volunteer who devotes two days a week to this important, but sometimes very difficult and frustrating, work. They are the backbone of our pension counseling work. We thank them again for all that they do.
f Retirement Lost and Found
Every year, the Pension Action Center tries to help the many clients who contact us because of a "lost pension". These cases usually occur when a person has left a job with a vested pension, but is not yet old enough to start receiving their benefit. When they reach retirement age, they cannot find the pension plan administrator for one reason or another - mostly, because the company they worked for has closed or changed hands or lost records or terminated the pension plan. About a quarter of the cases we open each year involve some variation of this problem. We have recently estimated that the scope of this problem nationwide might be over $150 billion in lost pension money.

New legislation proposed by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Steve Daines might go a long way to help retirees looking for the lost pensions they earned. For more information about this proposed legislation, read here:

http://www.pensionrights.org/issues/legislation/retirement-savings-lost-found-found-act 

gYou Can Make A Difference in the Lives of Retirees - Donate Today

The center's cases are managed by four pension counselors and two attorneys. Our staff, although small, works tirelessly for weeks, even years, to obtain pension benefits for our clients. In fact, for every dollar that we have received of federal, state, and foundation support, we have recovered $14 in pension benefits for our clients.

 

You can help us to continue making a difference in retirees' lives by donating online today or, to give by mail, please make checks payable to "University of Massachusetts Boston" and send to:  

 

University of Massachusetts Boston 
Gerontology Institute, Pension Action Center 
c/o Louise Cataldo
100 Morrissey Boulevard, Boston, MA 02125-3393

 

We are extremely thankful for the contributions that we receive from supporters like you who make our pension counseling work possible.

 

 donate_now_blue3_btn.gif 
Quick Links
Follow us on Twitter

Pension Action Center