Has the DOL issued transition relief allowing exclusion of past employees as part of the definition of “participants?
” The DOL is aware of the compliance issues that plan sponsors are confronted with in order to meet the audit requirement, as well as their inability to identify all participant contracts to be included in plan assets. In response to the burden on plan sponsors caused by this enactment, on July 20, 2009, the DOL issued Field Assistance Bulletin (“FAB”) 2009-02 to provide some transition relief for 403(b) plans, (www.dol.gov/ebsa/regs/fab2009-2.html). In order to take advantage of it, the plan sponsor needs to show that a good faith effort was made to obtain the previous year’s information for the audit. Beyond the good faith effort (which has not been defined), there are other requirements that need to be met. If the following criteria are met, according to FAB 2009-02, the individual contracts or custodial accounts do not have to be reported as plan assets on the Form 5500: • the contract or custodial account was issued to a current or former employee prior to January 1, 2009; • the e
