Actually, in 1974 the ERISA or that Employee Retirement Income Security Act was being enacted to be able to regulate many types of benefit plans for workers. ERISA section 412 and the regulated regulations require that the fiduciary of such employee benefit plan and each person who manages the funds or a property of another must be bonded.
The Act’s bonding requirements are necessary for protecting the benefit plans from risk of loss because of dishonesty or fraud on the part of the individuals who are handling the funds or any other property. In the ERISA, those individuals who would handle the funds or property of the employee benefit plan are referred to as plan officials. The Act demands that there must be a fidelity bond that should be placed to cover such fiduciary or the ones responsible in managing the plan and also the individuals who handle those funds or a property of the plan. Those fidelity bonds are there to provide protection to the plans from fraud or dishonesty which are committed by the people who are actually associated with them.
It is required that the plan official be bonded for at least ten percent of the amount of funds that one handles. In a lot of cases, the largest bond amount which is necessary under the ERISA is $500,000 for every plan. But, higher limits may also be purchased. But for the plan officials who are holding such employer securities, then the largest bond amount offered is $1,000,000.
You must know that such employee benefit plans with more than 5 percent of non-qualifying plan assets that are held in the limited partnerships, the mortgages, artwork, collectibles, real estate or securities of such closely-held companies and they are also held outside the regulated institutions such as the registered broker-dealer, the bank, insurance company or other kinds of organizations that are actually authorized in serving as trustee for the retirement accounts, plan sponsors should be doing one of these. One needs to make sure that the bond amount is 100 percent of value of those non-qualifying assets or one can also arrange for such annual full-scope audit in which the CPA is going to physically confirm the existence of those assets at the start and the end of that plan year.
The 401K has actually partnered with the Colonial Surety Company which is a leader of ERISA or 401K fidelity bonds. They are actually a national insurance company which is licensed in all fifty states and also territories of the US and they have been providing insurance products since 1930. They are surely the biggest direct seller of such fidelity bonds in the US.
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