Administration
Projected Benefit Payments in Selected Special Financial Assistance Applications (EVAL-2024-12), issued September 26, 2024
We determined the Corporation's procedures were generally sufficient to ensure increases in projected benefit payments were consistently identified, evaluated against appropriate criteria, and documented. We also determined that the sampled plans’ benefit payment projections in the SFA applications were generally reasonable and without significant errors.
However, we identified deceased participants in the SFA calculations of the sampled plans. Specifically, we found 570 deceased participants that led to SFA overpayments totaling an estimated $13.7 million. In November, we reported the impact of deceased participants identified in the Central States SFA application. As a result of the November report, as well as an earlier OIG report (No. 2023-05), the Corporation has significantly improved its SFA procedures, taken steps to ensure deceased participants are removed from SFA calculations, and begun the process of collecting overpayments from approved plans. In April 2024, Central States repaid about $127 million in SFA to the U.S. Treasury. Based on this information, we made two recommendations and PBGC agreed with the recommendations and plans to request closure on both by December 2024.
