We live in a world where there are required notices for just about everything! Employee benefits are no exception. At Peters & Milam, we want to assist our clients on their journey toward compliance, and therefore have complimentary products to help. This blog post will focus on the notices employers are required to have in-house and sometimes must provide to employees.

The Federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) mandates that employers/plan administrators provide a Summary Plan Document (SPD) to each participant and that ERISA-covered plans must be maintained in accordance with a written Plan Document.

A wrap plan document is a legal document that “wraps” together, or combines, all an employee’s welfare benefit plan arrangements and/or group insurance policies and contracts into one single document.

Many employers mistakenly think that insurance contracts, certificates of insurance, or benefits summaries fulfill this ERISA requirement for a SPD and a Plan Document, but they unfortunately don’t. We use specialized software to help our employers easily create these two documents into a single document that “WRAPS” them together.  This document needs to be updated whenever there are material modifications to your plan(s), but we usually recommend doing it annually. Be sure to read Part 2 of this series - “How Do I Distribute Employee Benefit Notices?” to learn more about the other notices that employers are required to distribute.

If you are a group client and haven’t heard from us yet about your updated WRAP document, you will soon. If you have any questions in the meantime, please feel free to contact us - Call us at (805) 687 - 3225, or send us an email at info@petersmilam.com. We can't wait to hear from you!

-Dave Peters