There are many minute and detailed regulations that apply to employee benefits, making it difficult for most companies to address them all without some help. In particular, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) places quite a few strictures and limitations on how businesses regulate the services that they provide to staff members as part of their compensation.
For example, ERISA requires that employers offer detailed literature about every single plan and benefit to each employee. Many organizations believe that this can be done simply by sharing literature and documentation that insurance carriers provide. While there may be a lot of data in this kind of literature, it isn't always adequate to fulfill each provision of ERISA.
Instead, such documents need to be supplemented by what's called an ERISA wrapper. This information essentially adds the relevant ERISA-mandated details that a lot of insurance literature leaves out. Knowing what data to include on an ERISA wrapper can be a challenge, which is why employee benefit specialists are such valuable professionals with which employers should work. Their experience and expertise will make it simple to properly follow federal regulations and give workers all the information they need to make educated decisions about their benefits.
