The challenges presented by the pandemic sparked a number of benefits-related legislative changes throughout 2020 and 2021, impacting the administrative services we provide for employer clients. Note that, with the exception of the extension of various deadlines due to the COVID-19 National Emergency, most of the relief provisions were discretionary and likely required plan amendments. For those employer clients that elected to implement any of discretionary relief provisions, ProBenefits assisted with necessary updates to legal documents. If an employer declined to adopt some or all discretionary relief provisions discussed below, such provisions do not apply to the employer’s plan, and the updated documents provided by ProBenefits include only the legally-mandated relief provisions.

While there are some permanent changes, most of the legislative changes were designed to provide only temporary relief to benefit plan participants. Thus, by the time 2022 began, most (but not all) of the relief provisions had expired. The outline below provides a breakdown of the provisions by status, while a more detailed overview of each item is available on our blog.