The US Department of the Treasury today rejected Central States Pension Fund’s application for benefit suspensions under the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 (MPRA). The rejection comes less than one day before the end of Treasury’s statutory 225-day application review period, after which an automatic approval would have kicked in. 

Treasury says it rejected the application because Central States failed to satisfy three of MPRA’s criteria: 

1. The Plan’s investment and entry age return assumptions were not reasonable.

2. The proposed suspensions were not equitably distributed across the UPS participant and beneficiary populations.

3. The suspension notices were drafted in an overly complicated manner (i.e., not easily understood by the average plan participant).

Treasury did not state whether it was allowing the Plan an opportunity to resubmit an application, or on what timeframe. Stay tuned for more updates and analysis.