Retirement Plan Record Retention

A retirement plan generates large amounts of documentation that you, as Plan Sponsor, are responsible for organizing and maintaining. Various records must be retained for the life of the plan, including all Plan Documents, details on benefit eligibility, details on benefits paid, and a history of each employee’s salary and hours-worked.

Some items may be disposed of after six years following the government filing to which they relate, however, the longer these records are kept, the easier it is to respond to a participant or government agency request.

We recommend that Plan Sponsors maintain file folders for each of the following categories: Plan Documents, Government Filings, Compliance, Participant Records, and Notices and Disclosures.  Further, you will want to be sure that each document is clearly signed and dated before being stored. 

If your plan offers salary deferrals, it is considered a best practice to obtain Enrollment Forms from everyone, even those that opt not to defer, as a way to document that the plan was offered to all eligible employees.