PBGC waives reporting for attrition events, effective immediately 

September 18, 2026

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) has announced a new reporting waiver, effective immediately. Technical Update 26-1 waives reporting for any attrition event with a reporting deadline on or after September 18. This means reporting will generally not be required for attrition events that occurred during 2025 and later plan years.

Plan sponsors must notify PBGC when the number of active participants drops below 80% of the number at the beginning of the current plan year. Reporting can be triggered by a single-cause event (such as a corporate transaction, spinoff, or mass layoff) or attrition. A single-cause event can happen at any time, but attrition events are measured only at year-end (and don’t include participants previously reported to PBGC due to a single-cause event). The new announcement waives reporting of attrition events, but not single-cause events.

The deadline for reporting an attrition event is the PBGC premium due date for the plan year after the event year — generally October 15 for a calendar-year plan. Reporting for 2025 plan year events would have been due October 15, 2026 (later for noncalendar year plans), but the waiver eliminates the requirement.

Event reporting is meant to give early warning of circumstances warranting additional review. However, PBGC has found that reporting attrition events rarely helps identify plans that present an increased risk to the agency’s insurance program, and that the administrative burden likely outweighs the value of the reports. Although the waiver is temporary, it will remain in effect until such time as PBGC amends its event-reporting regulations to make the waiver permanent.

• Technical Update 26-1 (PBGC, September 18, 2026)
• Reportable events and large unpaid contributions (PBGC web page)