Over the years, the BellTel Retirees—along with partners Retirees for Justice and the former ProtectSeniors.org—have achieved numerous legislative and regulatory successes. Perhaps some of the most significant of these occurred in Virginia and Connecticut.
In July 2015, then-CT Governor Dannel Malloy signed a vital pension de-risking protection act into law – Public Act 15-167.
Retirees For Justice Executive Director and BellTel special counsel Edward Stone led that effort with a group of BellTel retirees from Connecticut to lobby and testify in favor of legal fixes, in a state once recognized as the insurance capital.
Prior to the passage, many members expressed concerns about their pensions being vulnerable to creditors’ claims post-de-risking.
This was necessary after the horrific pension transfer of 41,000 retiree pensions to Prudential from Verizon.
Now, all retirees in Connecticut no longer need to worry about creditors making claims on their pension annuity payments.
In Virginia, BellTel retiree Dave Edmunds was one of the 41,000 who had his pension transferred to Prudential. Spurred on by the callous nature of the transfer Edmunds, a Virginia resident, joined Stone and former BellTel board member Jim Casey to champion pension de-risking protections in the commonwealth.
Meeting with state representatives, it became clear to Edmunds that public officials were only hearing the side of insurance companies and their interests in taking over and controlling pension plan assets.
After numerous visits to the state capital, the pension de-risking protection bill unanimously passed in the Virginia Senate and House in 2018.
This law says pension assets that have been de-risked cannot be subject to creditor claims. Additionally, the Virginia Bureau of Insurance must give its approval to any insurance company seeking to subsequently transfer pension assets in the future.
Now that pension de-risking is a massive asset class, generating more than $250 billion and growing for insurance and private equity firms, perhaps it’s time for our fellow retirees and other retiree organizations to join us in advocating similar measures in the other 48 states.
We can’t do it alone.