The Insured Retirement Institute (IRI) is urging the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to focus on maximizing the adoption of electronic delivery for document sharing.
In a comment letter to the DOL, the IRI strongly encouraged DOL to establish electronic delivery of documents and disclosures as a default mechanism to the greatest extent allowed by law. It also asked the DOL to consolidate and streamline notices and disclosures required under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). The comments were filed in response to a request for information (RFI) on the matter.
“To be clear, we continue to believe that individual consumers should have the option to request paper delivery, but in the modern world, paper should be the exception, not the rule,” Jason Berkowitz, chief legal and regulatory affairs officer at IRI, said. “The Department should seek to leverage the capabilities of modern technology to enhance and improve the consumer experience.”
The Secure 2.0 Act included a provision that directs DOL to revise its e-delivery rules to require at least one paper statement to be delivered every year unless certain conditions are met. IRI is urging DOL to only make necessary changes in response to that directive to minimize the adverse impact and consumer confusion.
IRI officials said that electronic delivery is safer and more effective than traditional paper delivery, with features like audit trails and multi-factor authentication providing greater consumer protections than paper. Using e-delivery to communicate with consumers also creates opportunities for the industry to provide dynamic, real-time information rather than static data and make it easier for consumers to navigate through that information to find important details.
“The enhanced consumer protections and flexibility made possible by e-delivery simply cannot be matched in the non-digital world,” Berkowitz said.
In the letter, IRI also emphasized that notices and disclosures required under ERISA should be presented clearly and concisely to ensure consumers read and understand them. Further, it said that disclosures that are duplicative, inconsistent, or spread out across multiple documents make it much harder for average consumers to comprehend the information.
The DOL issued an RFI because it believes it will be helpful to initiate progress on the specific SECURE 2.0 items by obtaining feedback from a diverse set of stakeholders. This feedback will inform more specific, detailed rulemaking or other guidance on such provisions in the future, including the completion of multiple reports to Congress.