Non-ERISA church defined benefit plans require a special expertise from their actuaries.  These plans are sometimes referred to as non-electing church plans because a church must elect to have its plan subject to the provisions of ERISA. For coverage and nondiscrimination, the rules that were in place prior to ERISA are the rules that must be followed.

Many actuarial firms specialize solely in ERISA plans, but Nyhart has a large number of church plans giving us insight into the unique needs and issues churches face in offering a pension.

The funding policy used by church plans varies depending upon the organizational goals.   Many plans fund on a fixed percentage of pay basis, while others fund on an uneven basis. Devising a sound funding policy is  a strength of ours because of our strong actuarial expertise.

Services Nyhart provides the following services to church plans

• Consulting on actuarial matters
• Outsourced administration to participants
• Communicating benefits to participants
• Designing alternative benefit structures
• Developing a long term funding strategy
• Evaluating the cost of benefit improvements
• Modeling future cost patterns
• Preparing participant benefit statements
• Creating a website for participants
• Supporting in-house client benefit administrators
• Preparing plan amendments and plan documents for legal counsel review

Why Nyhart?

Nyhart provides actuarial and administrative services to some of the largest church plans in the country. We have clients across many different religious organizations, and provide expert advice regarding design, implementation, funding and administration of their plan.

Dedicated teams, direct access

Each client at Nyhart has a dedicated team of actuaries, plan advisers and support staff. We provide you direct access to your team so your questions and issues can be handled confidentially by a team who knows your pension plan and can help resolve your issues.

Ask Nyhart

Do you have a church plan question? Please call us at (317) 845-3500 or email us at connect@nyhart.com today and we will be in touch quickly.