Employers with underfunded pension plans will be paying sharply higher premiums to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. next year.
In 2016, the variable rate premium will rise to $30 per $1,000 of unfunded vested benefits, up from the $24 rate for 2015, the PBGC announced Monday.
Of that $6 increase, $5 was set by a 2013 law, and the remainder was due to a provision in that law that ties increases in the variable rate premium to wage inflation.
In addition, the maximum variable rate premium next year will be capped at $500 per plan participant, up from the $418 per participant cap in 2015.
The base flat-rate premium — paid by all defined benefit plan sponsors — will increase in 2016 to $64 per plan participant, up from $57 in 2015.
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. projects, in a report issued Monday, that the deficit in its single-employer insurance program will continue to shrink, but paints — even with sweeping reform legislation passed last year — a very different and negative picture for its multiemployer insurance program.