Participant Group Benefits SPDs and SMMs Now Available Online; Retirement Plan Documents Coming Soon

Participants in the NRECA Group Benefits Program can now view their summary plan description (SPD) and summary of material modifications (SMM) documents on the Employee Benefits website. 401(k) Pension Plan and Retirement Security (RS) Plan SPDs and SMMs will be posted for participants in February. A page alert informs participants that retirement plan documents will be coming soon.

Participants can view and download their current group benefits SPDs and SMMs by going to cooperative.com > My Benefits > Education & Resources > Summary Plan Descriptions. Documents are shown based on participants’ current benefit enrollment and displayed by benefit plan (e.g., medical, dental or life), effective date and title.

Your existing benefits administrator (BA) SPD and SMM access and display have not changed.

Distribution and acknowledgement still required
As a reminder, the online process and requirement for BAs to acknowledge SPD and SMM distribution is not changing. Cooperatives may use the Employee Benefits website to deliver their SPDs and SMMs electronically to participants eligible under the 2002 Electronic Distribution Safe Harbor (for group and retirement documents) and the 2020 Electronic Distribution Safe Harbor (for retirement documents once they are available). For more on SPD distribution and acknowledgement, read the article in this issue on distributing group benefit SPDs and SMMs.

If you have questions about online SPDs and SMMs, contact NRECA’s Benefits Compliance team at 866.673.2299, option 7, or at group.compliance@nreca.coop (for group benefits documents) or at pension.compliance@nreca.coop (for retirement documents).