By: Russ Kamp, CEO, Ryan ALM, Inc.

Another week, another update, but for the first time since I began providing weekly updates about 4-years ago, there has been no activity to report.

I’m fairly confident that the entire agency didn’t go on Spring break together, but according to their regular update there were no applications received through the portal, which remains temporarily closed, no applications approved or denied, and none withdrawn. As has been the case recently, there were no recipients of Special Financial Assistance (SFA) asked to repay a portion of the grant due to census issues. Lastly, there were no multiemployer plans seeking to be added to the waitlist.

There continues to be only one plan sitting on the waitlist that isn’t identified as a “Plan Terminated by Mass Withdrawal before 2020 Plan Year” that hasn’t been given the opportunity to submit its application. We continue to seek information related to the 80 pension plans (from a potential universe of roughly 130) that remain on the waitlist as Mass Withdrawal casualties.

Between plans currently under review, those that have withdrawn an application, and those that have yet to file from earlier Priority Groups, the PBGC still has about 40 pension plans to review and approve before all that is left are the mass withdrawal waitlist members.

The PBGC is 79% of the way through the ARPA candidates when excluding the mass withdrawal applicants. It has been quite an arduous process since July 2021, but one that has reaped amazing results! As I recently mentioned, to date $77.9 billion has been granted to 159 plans that will preserve the promised benefits for >2.02 million plan participants. Wow. Congratulations to John Murphy and his Butch Lewis Act team that made this happen.