Pension system consists of three major parts: Enrollment & Eligibility, Pension Maintenance, and Reporting.

Enrollment & Eligibility Module provides the ability to define active participants, calculate pension credits based on working history and special situations, different pension types modeling.

It provides the facilities for collecting the required information, documents, and signatures, scan and save the documents, and keeping track of and maintaining the Pension Application Process.

The Pension Maintenance Module provides the ability to pay regular pension (by checks and direct deposits), make necessary adjustments and replacements (on the individual and mass level), void checks, maintain the reconciliation process with the banks, deduct and pay taxes, dues, and other deductions. The module keeps track of demographic changes in families and provides the ability to handle beneficiaries, surviving spouses, and QDRO’s.

The Pension Reporting Module provides the ability to generate all required reports and/or files for IRS, and Principal Company (Segal). The reports for internal usage for Enrollment and Maintenance Modules will be done by these corresponding modules.

List of Functional Requirements for Pension module:

• 1. The system is able to keep, maintain and determine reciprocal pensioners.
• 2. Automatic calculation of federal tax withholding. Calculates withholding based on marital status and number of exemptions. Deducts a flat dollar amount as indicated by the participant instead of or in addition to the above.
• 3. State tax and Child Support fields were added as additional deduction fields.
• 4. Permanent storage of a participant’s payment history from the date of retirement. Including: check number, issue date of check , gross amount, tax withholding, other deductions, reason (automatic, manual, etc.), date(s) payment is for, status (reconciled, stale, suspended), date the check was cashed, notes (to be used for special issues such as initial checks, recoupments, adjustments due to recalculations).
• 5. A Retiree’s or surviving spouse/beneficiary record includes pension benefit amount, award data, effective date, type of pension, form of payment, etc. and other data including tax withholding amounts, other deductions, retroactive amount, retroactive beginning and ending dates.
• 6. Prints pension checks for each Retiree (or spouse/beneficiary). The first check for a new Retiree may include retroactive payment. Checks will be printed in either payee alpha sequence or by payee Social Security Number.
• 7. The check and check stub, from data entered or system calculation or update, will include the following information:
  • a. Check Date
  • b. Retiree/Spouse/Beneficiary Social Security Numbers
  • c. Payee Name (Retiree or Spouse/Beneficiary)
  • d. Type of Pension
  • e. Form of Payment
  • f. Effective Date
  • g. Gross Monthly Amount
  • h. Deductions – Itemized
  • i. Net Amount of Check
• 8. Provides the capability for electronic funds transfer (“EFT”) through the automated clearing house (ACH). ACH requires a payment wire containing data with dollar amounts to process funds transfer. Additionaly Excis had to support additional Custodian Bank - Amalgamated.
• 9. Automatically stops printing checks for the Retiree (or Spouse/Beneficiary) upon entry of a death date. Automatically produces the next check in the recipient’s name when an optional form of payment was chosen and accumulates calendar year payments in a separate register with the recipient’s SSN, for IRS reporting. Such check may be retroactive to the first of the month following the date of death of the Retiree. An IRS reporting form will be produced for each payee (Retiree and spouse/beneficiary(ies) in the same calendar year. The spouse/beneficiary payment record will be linked to the deceased Retiree’s record so that a complete payment record can be easily recalled.
• 10. About 40 monthly lead sheet and cash register reports were implemented.
• 11. Provides for entry of a void or stop-payment and subtracts the amount from the various totals. Checks will be entered and the system will add the amount to the appropriate totals. (i.e., a Void and Re-issue function)
• 12. New functionality to support $1000 special death benefit for retirees with 20 years of service.
• 13. The Monthly Age 65 Report lists all employees who will attain age 65 6 months from the date which the report is run. The report will show basic demographic data for each listed employee.
• 14. The Annual Age 70½ Report, which is run in October of each year.
• 15. An IRS Form 1099R will be printed for each payee indicating the total benefits paid during the calendar year. If a Retiree and a beneficiary or alternate payees receive checks in a calendar year, a 1099R must be prepared for each. In addition, IRS regulations require that copies of 1099R forms be filed by magnetic media (e.g., magnetic disk) or electronically annually. The system will meet the IRS filing requirements.
• 16. Credits for each employee need to be accumulated in the employee’s pension record by employer and work month and year. Provides for the storing, retrieving and calculating pension credit (fractional percentage) vesting service, and breaks-in-service based on the Plan’s rules.
• 17. The employee’s pension record lists by month the hours/functions worked from date of entry in to the pension system; ability to get a printout of the record.
• 18. Maintains all of the required information as it relates to the reciprocal process.
• 19. Flag year in which the employee met the requirements to be a Participant in the Plan.
• 20. Provides a pension application screen to manage the process. The screen will contain fields to check-off the receipt of a number of different documents.
• 21. Pensioner master file record has field for indicating the latest re-certification date of a Disability Retiree and generates letters requesting proof of disability from the participant; record updated to reflect the date the proof was received and the type of documentation.
• 22. Provides fields as part of the employee pension master file to record pertinent details of a QDRO, including document tracking and separate pension status codes for both the employee and the QDRO participant.
• 23. Provides for the tracking of DROs received and generates notices to be sent to various entities. The system will also allow for the updating from a DRO to a QDRO.
• 24. Calculates the amount of pension benefit for eligible plan participants based upon the type of pension elected, taking into account all factors. These factors include:
  • a. Participant’s Normal Retirement Date
  • b. Age of the Applicant at Effective Date of Pension (for Type of Pension and to determine J&S factors)
  • c. Age of Spouse at Effective Date of Pension (for Husband-and-Wife)
  • d. Age of Beneficiary at Effective Date of Pension (for grandfathered provisions where applicable)
  • e. Past Service Benefit
  • f. Vesting Service (excluding time used for waiting periods, eligibility computation periods and excused absences)
  • g. Contributions
  • h. Effective Date of Pension
  • i. Form of Payment (J&S, 5-year certain, etc.)
  • j. Type of benefit elected (Normal, Early, Disability, etc.)
• 25. Ability to maintain different option factors for disability pension benefits and age reduction factors for participants retiring on an Early Retirement Pension. Calculate benefits under each of the options.
• 26. Calculate benefits under all payment options; Joint & Survivor, Five or Ten Year Certain, and Straight Life Annuity.
• 27. Calculates estimated pension amounts under all specified conditions and produces a response letter for mailing to the employee.
• 28. Ability to perform retirement modeling.
• 29. Increase Retiree payments either by a percentage of the pension benefit or by a flat amount. Such increase may be individual, by “class” of Retiree (such as pension effective date) or a general adjustment (such as benefit increase/decreases due to a recalculation). The method governing such change will be user accessible subject to security provisions including a complete audit trail.
• 30. Ability to provide for suspension of benefit if a Retiree returns to work in prohibited employment. Maintains a record of the date when the rules governing Suspension of Benefits were mailed, provides a field for the entry of a date pension benefits were reinstated and produces a monthly report of Retirees whose benefits have been suspended.
• 31. Automatically terminates Club pension payments to the spouse/beneficiary after a total of 60 monthly payments have been made.
• 32. A Pre-Check Listing produced as a result of input to add, suspend or reinstate a Retiree on the Retirement roll.
• 33. Provides a user-accessible message field so that an ad-hoc message can be printed on check stubs.
• 34. Automatically creates a list of checks for suspension after a specified amount of time if the pensioner does not cash his/her check and generate a report.
• 35. Ability to generate a check but place it on hold for a specified reason for release at a later date.
• 36. Produces data requested by the Plan’s Consulting actuary (Segal company) as indicated on the Actuarial Data Request.
• 37. Conversion and further maintenance of 21,715 HTC pensioners from NCS
• 38. Conversion and further maintenance of 3,273 Club pensioners from NCS