Don’t Rely on Just Your Luck to Keep Your Business in Compliance
When keeping a business in compliance, don’t rely on just your luck to protect the employer from being vulnerable to penalties and audits. Rely on BASE® to provide you with all of the required documentation to encompass benefits the employer provides into one document to keep business owners in compliance.
The federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) mandates that employers/plan administrators of ERISA-covered plans provide a Summary Plan Description (SPD) to each participant and that plans be maintained in accordance with a written Plan Document. The BASE® ERISA Wrap is designed to help employers fulfill the ERISA requirements for an SPD and Plan Document. It applies to virtually all employers who offer or sponsor benefits, regardless of size or number of participants. The only entities that are exempt from ERISA are governmental employers and bona fide church groups.
Many companies mistakenly assume that insurance contracts, certificates of insurance, and benefits summaries fulfill the ERISA requirements – but they do not include the required provisions that protect the plan and the employer. Failure to provide such documentations within 30 days can result in a penalty of up to $110/day per employee. So employers shouldn’t leave compliance to chance, because all it takes is just one inaccurate filing, investigation, or complaint, and they could be paying the price.
The BASE® ERISA Wrap allows employers to fulfill the Department of Labor’s (DOL) SPD and Plan Document mandates. Employers, or plan administrators of the group health plans, need to comply with two important requirements or risk the potential penalties:
- Maintain and distribute Summary Plan Descriptions (SPDs) to plan participants which accurately reflect the contents of the plan and which include specific information as required by law.
- Group health plans must be administered in accordance with a written Plan Document which must be made available to plan participants and beneficiaries upon request.
Why is an ERISA Wrap so important? Not only does it fulfill the ERISA requirements for an SPD and Plan Document, but it also provides ERISA required information for employers to provide to their employees. The ERISA Wrap fills in gaps of information not covered in insurance booklets from insurance carriers. Some of this information includes: hours an employee must work for eligibility, waiting periods, ERISA plan numbers, guidelines for document distribution and rights of member, and more.
How it works:
- Employer provides plan information to BASE® for all ERISA employee benefit plans.
- BASE® produces all required documentation as established by ERISA.
- BASE® provides and maintains all documentation to employer for distribution to all eligible employees.
What’s next? Don’t rely on just your luck and pick up the phone. Call 1-888-386-9680 and speak with a BASE® Account Manager and find out how enrolling in the BASE® ERISA Wrap will provide all the necessary documentation needed to stay in compliance or visit www.BASEonline.com.
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