Pay Your Obligations, PBGC: For decades, the PBGC has asserted that the federal government does not guarantee retirement assets after a pension risk transfer. But one law firm is saying: Yes, it still does.
 

Ivins, Phillips & Barker is challenging PBGC’s long-standing view that retirees lose federal protection once pensions are converted to annuities, pointing to a 1981 statue which said  guarantees would still apply even after benefits are transferred to a private insurer.

“The PBGC was created to protect pensions,” attorneys from IPB wrote in a white paper. “Returning to the original 1981 position better aligns the PBGC to its statutory purpose.”
 

I recently spoke with Kevin O’Brien, an ERISA attorney at the firm who co-wrote the paper, about why he thinks the PBGC backpedaled its stated remit of protecting pensions. He told me that before quietly reversing its position in 1991, the agency twice asked Congress for relief — and was turned down both times.