Insurance Contracts Don’t Guarantee ERISA Compliance
This is the second installment in a series of three blogs leading up to our Compliancedashboard® webinar on December 5th, 2018: Contracts 101: Creating Simple, Compliant Service Provider Agreements.
In the first blog of this series, we looked at essential contract provisions for service provider agreements. This week let’s talk insurance contracts and “wrap docs”. If you are a Plan Sponsor with an insurance contract, it’s likely you will need to supplement the insurance booklet with a “wrap document” (containing missing terms) in order to meet ERISA requirements for Plan Documents. Many insurers simply do not include employer-specific Plan information in contracts or negotiate contract provisions; therefore, when reviewing your “wrap doc.” consider inclusion of the following:
ERISA Plan information:
- Plan Name;
- Plan Administrator;
- Plan Fiduciary;
- The number of Plans the Plan Sponsor maintains; and
- For Form 5500 purposes, the Plan Year and Plan Number.
Additional provisions to consider:
- Indemnification by the employer of its employees who perform Plan functions;
- The employer’s right to amend certain Plan provisions;
- The employer’s Plan enrollment process;
- Specific employee and dependent eligibility criteria; and
- A statement of the employer’s right to set and modify the amount of employee contributions.
*This blog post is not intended to constitute legal advice. Please consult your counsel regarding plan-specific needs.
