Beneficiary Designation Certified Mailings Begin

On Thursday, July 14, certified letter mailings will begin to participants in a General Board-administered retirement plan who have not updated his or her beneficiaries. These mailings were originally scheduled to begin in January; however, they were delayed, and another regular mailing was added, to minimize the number of participants that needed to be reached via this method.

The letters will be sent in three mailings. The first mailing will include 1,000 participants.

The General Board sent three letters to these participants—December 2010, March and April 2011—to highlight the importance of keeping beneficiary designations current and to ask them to help us conserve plan dollars by avoiding the expense of a certified mailing. Additionally, two articles were posted on the General Board website and an online notice was placed on the website homepage asking participants who had not returned a signed beneficiary confirmation to send in a Designation of Beneficiary for Retirement and Welfare Plans.

The response to our communications has been tremendous. Of the 73,400 participants contacted, approximately 92% (67,000) responded by sending a signed confirmation or updated form. A significant number of participants made changes to their beneficiary designations. We hope to receive forms from the approximately 6,000 remaining participants following the certified letter mailing.

Thank you for all you have done to support the General Board’s beneficiary update efforts. For additional information about beneficiary designations, please visit www.gbophb.org/retirement/articles/beneficiary.asp.

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