Notice from Retirement Clearinghouse: Many faculty members and other University employees have recently received notices from a company called Retirement Clearinghouse (RCH) regarding monies from a class action settlement in Short v. Brown University that were put into an IRA for them. A significant number of those notices were sent in error, which created confusion for the recipients. The Settlement Administrator that erroneously sent the notices is working to correct the problem and has posted a notice of the problem on the settlement website: www.BrownUniversityERISAsettlement.com. Here is a brief description of what occurred and the steps being taken to rectify the error.
Under the Settlement Agreement in Short v. Brown University, qualifying class members are to receive a share of the settlement fund that Brown paid to the plaintiffs’ counsel and their Settlement Administrator. For class members who are current account holders in the Brown University Deferred Vesting Retirement Plan or the Brown University Legacy Retirement Plan, or both, the Settlement Administrator is required to identify and distribute their shares to TIAA and Fidelity, the Plans’ recordkeepers and investment providers, for deposit into the class members’ current account(s) in the Plan(s). For class members who are former account holders in one or both of the Plans, the Settlement Administrator is required to identify and distribute their shares to a third-party IRA provider, RCH, for deposit by RCH into a separate Safe Harbor IRA for each such class member. Under plaintiffs’ counsel’s settlement allocation formula, a former account holder is entitled to a settlement share only if the amount of the share otherwise calculated under the formula is $25 or more.