Pension Plan Communications: Be Careful What You Say

Administrators of registered pension plans are statutorily required to provide certain information to plan members and other plan beneficiaries. As the administrator of a single employer pension plan is often the employer, that obligation, therefore, falls on the employer. In order to reduce liability, it is important that employers provide members and other plan beneficiaries with accurate and complete information and comply with their statutory obligations. In this blog post, we highlight some best practices in plan communications.

• Understand your statutory obligations: Under applicable pension standards legislation, plan administrators are required to provide members and other plan beneficiaries with communications throughout their plan membership. These include plan summaries or booklets, annual or biennial statements, termination statements and notices of plan amendments. If a plan administrator fails to provide statutorily required information to members and