A public transit system that serves over 10 million riders annually was frustrated by its pension administrator’s high frequency of mistakes and lack of responsiveness to plan participant and trustee requests. For example, participant payments were often initiated as late as 18 months beyond the intended benefit commencement date, and participants and trustees who left messages with the pension service center complained to executive management that they never received return calls. The plan sponsor suspected the problems were being exacerbated by the administrator’s lack of reliable recordkeeping.
SBA delivered the following scope of services:
- SBA proposed a high service, personalized approach to defined benefit plan administration with a simple call tree and meaningful service level agreements for accuracy and timeliness of response
- Staffed the service center with exceptionally skilled and knowledgeable resources who averaged 15 years’ experience in employee benefits and included both analysts and defined benefit specialists in a single location
- Reconstructed employee contribution history based on payroll files and Instilled rigorous data management protocols using a dedicated database
- Built consolidated database of current and term vested pension participants
- Established protocols for separating administration and check-writing responsibilities, including the transition of benefit payment services to the custodian
- Engaged in periodic retirement seminars to build relationships with participants approaching retirement and ensure timely benefit commencement
- Facilitated quarterly board meetings and swiftly resolved inquiries from pension board of trustees
After the transition of pension administration to SBA, benefits managers stopped getting humiliating calls from participants who weren’t getting calls back from the pension center. Within just three weeks, SBA had researched and located 85% of lost participants. With reliable data on hand at all times, SBA was able to eliminate the introduction of new errors related to benefits commencement.
