No Insurance For Defined Contribution Plans
One reason Congress enacted ERISA was "to prevent the 'great personal tragedy' suffered by employees whose vested benefits are not paid when pension plans are terminated." When a defined benefit plan is properly funded by its sponsor, its assets should be approximately equal to its liability, and any shortfall (including benefit improvements) should be amortized in a relatively short period of time. Before ERISA, employers and willing unions could agree to increase benefits with little thought to how to pay for them. A classic case of the unfortunate consequences of an underfunded pension plan is the 1963 shutdown of Studebaker automobile operations in South Bend, Indiana, in which 4,500 workers lost 85% of their vested benefits. One of ERISA's stated intentions was to minimize underfunding in defined benefit plans.
Defined contribution plans — by contrast and by definition — are always "fully funded." Thus Congress saw no need to provide insurance protection for participants in defined contribution plans. The Enron scandal in 2001 demonstrated one potential problem with defined contribution plans: the company had strongly encouraged its workers to invest their 401(k) plans in their employer itself, violating primary investment guidelines about diversification. When Enron went bankrupt, many workers lost not just their jobs but also most of the value of their retirement savings. Congress inserted trust law fiduciary liability upon employers who did not prudently diversify plan assets to avoid the chance of large losses inside Section 404 of ERISA, but it is unclear whether such fiduciary liability applies to trustees of plans in which participants direct the investment of their own accounts.
Read more about this topic: Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation
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