Where's My Old Job's Pension? There Are Ways to Track It Down
By KELLY GREENE
September 2, 2006;PageB4
Q. How can I track down the pension fund of a company I worked for a long time ago? I worked from 1970 to 1984 at a dental lab that had a pension. I left to go back to college, then entered corporate America. The company was Cerma-Dent Studios in Lynbrook, N.Y. It merged with another company and moved to Rockville Centre, N.Y. Who has that fund, and am I entitled to the money that was paid into it?
A. People who have lost track of pension benefits from past jobs are in good company: Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., the federal government's pension insurer, holds $75 million in unclaimed benefits for about 26,000 people whose defined-benefit plans -- traditional pensions -- were closed. The average benefit is about $3,675, though they range from $1 to $264,548. And the Labor Department estimates that 1,650 401(k) plans covering 33,000 workers, holding $868 million in assets, are terminated each year.
You won't be entitled to those benefits unless you worked there long enough to be "vested" in the plan, meaning that no matter when you left the job, you are eligible for a pension at retirement age. Most pensions currently require five years on the job before vesting. Many plans set up before the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 required workers to stay on the job for at least 10 or 15 years. But because the rules that were in place when you left the job determine when you were vested, "if you put in some substantial time at an employer, it's probably worth trying to hunt it down," says John Hotz, deputy director of the Pension Rights Center, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington.
Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. provides a shortcut for people in defined-benefit plans that were terminated at search.pbgc.gov1. Type in your last name to find out if you're on a list of "lost" beneficiaries. You can also enter the company's name to see if the PBGC has taken over the plan.
If that search turns up empty, a good primer for your search is "Finding a Lost Pension," at pensionaction.org/publications/lostpension.htm2. The publication, developed by the PBGC and the Pension Action Center at the University of Massachusetts Boston, suggests getting in touch with former co-workers, seeking information from the union that represented workers, or asking the local chamber of commerce where your former employer moved or who bought it out.
FreeErisa.com3 has a huge database of pension-plan tax returns that include information about the plan administrator, service providers and actuaries. For older documents, you can request an archive search for a fee. Another Web site, corporateaffiliations.com4, tracks mergers and acquisitions.
You can also get free help from one of 11 pension-counseling centers around the country listed at pensionrights.org/help5. The Labor Department's Employee Benefits Security Administration offers help searching for terminated or abandoned 401(k) plans through local offices, listed at You can search online at askebsa.dol.gov/AbandonedPlanSearch7.