DOL Releases Audit Results of ERISA Enforcement During 2023

The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has released the results of its Employee Benefits Security Administration’s (EBSA)
enforcement actions during fiscal year(FY) 2023.

Through its enforcement of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA),the EBSA oversees approximately 2.8 million health plans, 765,00 private pension plans, and 619,000 other welfare benefit plans. According to the audit, these plans cover 153 million workers, retirees and dependents.

Enforcement Statistics

In FY 2023, EBSA recovered over 1.4 billion dollars for employee benefit plans, participants and beneficiaries. Other key EBSA enforcement results include the following:

EBSA closed 731 civil investigations. Of these, 69% resulted in monetary results for employee benefit plans or other corrective actions;
EBSA referred 50 cases for civil litigation and closed 196 criminal investigations; and
EBSA’s criminal investigations led to the indictment of 60 individuals—including plan officials, corporate officers and service providers—for offenses related to employee benefit plans.

Compliance Assistance Statistics

The DOL audit fact sheet also includes statistics for the EBSA’s compliance assistance programs, the Voluntary Fiduciary Correction Program (VFCP) and theDelinquent Filer Voluntary Compliance Program (DFVCP).

The VFCP allows plan officials who have identified specified ERISA violations to take corrective action to remedy the breaches and voluntarily report the violations to EBSA without becoming the subject of an enforcement action. In FY 2023, EBSA received 1,192 applications through the VFCP.
The DFVCP encourages plan administrators to bring their plans into compliance with ERISA’s filing requirements. EBSA received 18,955 annual reports through this program in FY 2023, and the EFAST2 Help Desk handled over 16,000 inquiries to help filers meet their reporting obligations.