The Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration recovered more than $2.4 billion for plans, participants and beneficiaries in fiscal 2021, a drop from a record $3.1 billion recovered in fiscal 2020.
According to EBSA's recently released fact sheet, in fiscal 2021, EBSA closed 1,072 civil investigations, with 741 of those investigations resulting in monetary penalties for plans or other corrective action.
The investigations led to 16,024 "terminated vested participants" in defined benefit plans collecting benefits of $1.548 billion owed to them.
"Terminated vested results represent a combination of the present values of lifetime annuity payments made to defined benefits plan participants and beneficiaries, or lump sum balance payments, plus interest distributions paid as either retroactive lump sums or included in actuarially adjusted future annuity amounts," EBSA explained.
EBSA benefit advisors closed more than 175,000 inquiries, which resulted in recovering $499.5 million in benefits on behalf of workers and their families through informal resolution of individual complaints.
