We will release the Annual Salary Verification Report in mid-August and send a follow-up notice when the report is ready for you to view and work it.

The report is an essential step in ensuring that covered employees receive the correct basic life insurance coverage each year.

Eligible employees receive one times their annual salary in basic life insurance coverage. The amount of coverage adjusts each January according to the employee’s annual earnings in effect on July 31 of the previous year (or the employee’s first day of coverage if not covered on July 31).

• Annual earnings include normal earnings from a benefit-eligible position, including shift differential pay.
• Overtime pay and other irregular payments are excluded from annual earnings.

Last year we received a few inquiries regarding the pay types of “retention pay,” a “security differential,” and “COVID-19 pay.”  Please note:

• Retention pay and a security differential (just as a shift differential noted above) are included in annual earnings.
• COVID-19 pay, on the other hand, is excluded from annual earnings.

Additionally, if an employee is working in both a benefit-eligible and non-benefit eligible position at the same time, only pay from the benefit-eligible position is included in annual earnings.

Please email employers@mosers.org if you have questions about the annual salary verification process. You can also watch a brief video tutorial on how to work the report, if needed.

Please do not send LTD packets to MOSERS or The Standard via unencrypted email due to the sensitivity of the personal data involved. Rather than emailing forms, please instruct employees to call in their claims to The Standard at (844)-505-6026. We appreciate your cooperation. Thank you! 

We will host the next employer training webinar on Thursday, July 29 from 10:00 a.m. until 10:45 a.m. This session will be delivered by the MOSERS Employer Services Department and, based on your feedback from the last webinar, topics will include a deeper dive into transfer and termination forms.

Visit our Employer Training webpage for the most up-to-date information!

Last week, we sent an email to newer employees inviting them to join us for a Newer Employees & MOSERS Webinar. This is a great opportunity to start learning about the employee benefits administered by MOSERS, including pension, life insurance, long-term disability, and personal retirement savings plan options. To accommodate different work schedules, we have both day and an evening session available.

If you have newer employees, please encourage them to register today for a session! As with all of our member education events, HR representatives are also welcome to attend!

Please contact MOSERSEducation@mosers.org if you have any questions! 

Save the dates for this year’s Benefits U Conference! We are currently finalizing our agenda for speakers and session content and will continue sharing updates as things develop. You will always find the most current information on the Benefits U webpage. We anticipate registration opening around the first part of August.

If you missed prior updates, here are a couple of reminders: the conference will be held online this year due to the ongoing COVID-19 situation; and, with the online nature, sessions will be scheduled over a series of days instead of everything in one day. 

The employer retirement contribution rate is calculated by MOSERS’ external actuary and is certified by the MOSERS Board of Trustees every year. As a reminder, the employer retirement contribution rates for MSEP, MSEP 2000, and MSEP 2011, as well as for the Judicial Plan and Judicial Plan 2011, are changing effective July 1, 2021. 

The changes to the employer retirement contribution rates for the respective plans effective July 1, 2021 are as follows: 

There are no changes to the employer contribution rates for CURP, basic life insurance, and long-term disability benefits.   

If you are a Non-SAM II employer, please take note and adjust retirement contributions effective July 1, 2021 as needed.

If you are a SAM II employer, contributions occur automatically as a percentage of payroll, and no additional action is required of you.

For more information about Employer Contributions, please visit our website.  

All newly-hired benefit-eligible employees (or former employees who have missed at least 30 calendar days of payroll) must be keyed into the Statewide Employee Benefit Enrollment System (SEBES) on their date of hire, or as soon as possible thereafter. New benefit-eligible employees have only 31 days from their date of hire to enroll in most benefit offerings. Failing to enroll an employee through SEBES could result in a delay or ineligibility for certain benefits. When entering an employee’s information in SEBES, it is very important to enter information correctly. Information entered incorrectly could impact the employee’s ability to enroll in or utilize MOSERS-sponsored benefits.

Universities: SEBES does not apply to “education employees” enrolled in CURP. However, eligible CURP employees electing to transfer from CURP to MOSERS must be enrolled through SEBES in addition to completing the Transfer of CURP Membership form.

What do I do if I key a new employee’s demographic information incorrectly in SEBES?

If you make an error when entering a new employee’s demographic information in SEBES, correct the error by updating the employee’s profile in SEBES. To update or make changes to an employee’s demographic information, log in to your SEBES employer account and, under the Employee tab, select Update. Make the necessary corrections and click Update.

What do I do if I entered the SSN of a new employee incorrectly into SEBES?

If you create the SEBES record with an incorrect SSN, you must delete the record and re-enter the member in SEBES with the correct SSN. To delete the employee from SEBES, log into your SEBES employer account and, under the Employee tab, select Delete. Key in the incorrect SSN and select Incorrect SSN as the reason for the deletion, then click Submit.

Additionally, you must delete the record and re-enter correct information for employees entered into SEBES with incorrect employment information, including:

• hire date,
• benefit-eligible information, or
• job classification. 
  

What do I do if an employee I entered into SEBES did not show up for work on their hire date?

If the new employee did not show up for work on their hire date, delete their record from SEBES.

Under certain circumstances, members can purchase service based upon their prior public service or active-duty military service for credit in MOSERS. Prior public service includes full-time employment with another public entity in Missouri, such as a city or county government, a local school district, or the University of Missouri System. By purchasing eligible service, members can increase the amount of their future retirement benefit and, in some cases, become eligible to retire at an earlier date. 

Members have a few options to pay for service purchases, including a one-time lump-sum payment, installment plan (monthly or semi-monthly payments for up to two years), a rollover from a qualified retirement plan, or a combination thereof. 

Members who are paid through SAM II can have installment payments deducted from their payroll check. Members electing this option must have their MOSERS Election to Purchase Service form signed by their payroll/personnel officer. The payroll/personnel officer must enter the deduction as directed on the form into SAM II using MSRBB as the deduction type and deduction plan.  

On occasion, members may have more than one service purchase agreement. For example, a member may choose to buy both their active-duty military service and their time working for a city or county government in Missouri. It is important to note that SAM II will not allow two separate MSRBB deductions to be entered. In these cases, the payroll/personnel officer must combine the payments into one MSRBB deduction. 

Payroll deduction for an installment plan is available only to members who are paid through SAM II.

Members who are not paid through SAM II can make monthly installment payments directly to MOSERS. 

Thank you to all who participated in the employer survey regarding our new pension administration system (PAS)! Your input will help us gauge the overall understanding of the PAS among employer representatives and help guide us regarding future communications to you about the PAS. We will continue to update you through HR Update and the upcoming Benefits U conference. 

Follow the link below to find the Employer Forms Webinar recording from April 21, 2021.

Employer Forms Webinar - RECORDING

To register to watch the recording, enter your name and email address. To move through the recording use the progress bar at the bottom: 

00 – 13 min: Intro to MOSERS Forms

13 – 33 min: Leave of Absence Form, including Back to Work

33 – 40 min: Transfer of Employment Form

40 – 60 min Termination of Employment Form

1:00 – 1:27 min: Q & A; overview of Employer webpage

The content was presented by Juanita Mummert, Assistant Benefits Officer-Education; Jamie Mullen, Employer Services Manager; Juanita Libbert, Receivables Analyst; and Shelley Lehmann, Contribution Analyst.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Download Webinar handouts:

• Employer Forms Webinar – Slides
• Employer Forms – Quick Reference
• Employer Forms – FAQ
• Leave of Absence Resources [Impact on Benefits; Flow Chart; Military Leave]

Does your agency have a periodic newsletter? We are always looking for new ways to get benefit information to our members. If your agency has a newsletter and is interested, we would be happy to provide beneficial information regarding MOSERS benefits. Please contact MOSERSEducation@mosers.orgif you are interested.

The Access Authorization form, which is used to grant employer representatives secure access to specific employee information through our secure Employer Login, has recently been updated. The updates were made to better identify employer representatives who serve as the primary contact for HR/payroll functions or LTD claim administration.

Primary contacts serve an important role in managing their employees’ MOSERS-sponsored benefits, and identifying these contacts will help ensure that benefits are administered timely and accurately. An employer representative completing the Access Authorization form will now designate if they are the primary HR/payroll or LTD contact in Section B of the form.

Employer Representative Access and Responsibilities

All employer representatives submitting the Access Authorization form will:

• Have access to all organizations/sections within their department/agency/university; and
• Have the ability to view reports and submit forms.
  

Employer representatives identified as the primary contact have additional responsibilities in the administration of MOSERS-sponsored benefits:

• Primary HR/payroll contact: Will resolve payroll and service discrepancies identified on MOSERS’ error reports. Orgs/Sections for which they are the primary contact must be noted on the Access Authorization form.
• Primary LTD contact: Will complete the Employer Statement for LTD claims. Orgs/Sections for which they are the primary contact must be noted on the Access Authorization form.
  

Helpful Hints

• The Access Authorization form must be signed by the agency director.
• Each organization/section can have only one employer representative designated as the primary HR/payroll contact and one employer representative designated as the primary LTD contact. Employer representatives who serve as the primary contact for both HR/payroll and LTD should indicate both in Section B. 
• If the employer representative submitting the form will be taking the place of a previous employer representative who was designated as the primary contact, space is provided in Section B to list the name of the employer representative they are replacing and the effective date. 

Our first annual MOSERS Month in April was a success! Thank you for your support in encouraging your employees to participate!

More than 800 members took our career stage vocab quiz while many others participated in some of the other 11 activities to learn more about their MOSERS benefits!

We want to hear your thoughts on MOSERS Month! Take a moment to answer our 5-question survey. We will use your feedback to plan for MOSERS Month next year. Thanks! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/TH7XXS3

As you may know, we are building a new pension administration system (PAS)! Our current PAS was built in the late 1980s and has served us well for more than 30 years, but it is nearing the end of its life expectancy. The new PAS will help us:

• Sustain and improve customer service for all stakeholders including members and employers
• Become more efficient and increase automation
• Improve accuracy of member data and controls

The PAS is analogous to the central nervous system of  MOSERS. Building it is a multi-year project. We  expect to provide members, staff, and employers with a modernized system on an updated platform in late  2022.

The PAS  contains all demographic data (name, address, SSN, Member ID, DOB, bank account numbers, etc.), individual service dates, salary history, employment status,  contribution balances, and benefit payment history for all members. It is the central hub for tracking and processing nearly everything MOSERS does related to benefit administration. Staff rely on it for accurately producing everything from routine correspondence to Annual Benefit Statements, to pension inceptions, to member payments. 

Employers interact with the PAS to submit member payroll and service credit information, including the submission of changes such as terminations or leaves of absence. 

Your input as an employer representative is vital to the overall success of our PAS project. There will be different points along this journey when we need your input. We have engaged approximately 25 employer representatives so far regarding the submission of payroll data. Now, we need to hear from you,  as one of our valuable partners. We encourage you to participate in our upcoming survey on April 30^th.

Your input will help us gauge the overall understanding of the PAS among employer representatives and help guide us regarding future communications to you about the PAS.

Thank you in advance for your participation! 

The 2021 Annual Benefit Statements for active members are now available online. Employees can access their statement by logging in to myMOSERS, clicking on Online Documents then on Document Express. If they have opted to receive their correspondence from MOSERS through the mail, we will mail their statement to their home address. It is also available as described above. Please encourage your employees to review their Annual Benefit Statements. They are a great tool for planning and assessing retirement readiness. 

(Please share with your staff who are responsible for submitting HR/payroll data to MOSERS and encourage them to attend.)

Registration is OPEN!

Join the MOSERS Employer Services staff on Wednesday, April 21, from 10:00 a.m. until 11:30 a.m. to learn more about the importance of submitting leave of absence forms and how leaves affect employees' benefits administered by MOSERS. We will also discuss how and when to submit transfer and termination forms.

Register today: https://register.gotowebinar.com/register/9015162331775697168.

Agenda:

10:00 am – 11:00 am – Leaves, Terms & Transfers

11:00 am – 11:30 am – Open Q & A

We will post the recording on the MOSERS website as soon as possible after the event. 

Save the date!

Planning has started for the 2021 Benefits U Conference. The conference will be held online this year due to the ongoing COVID-19 situation. With the online nature, sessions will be scheduled over a series of days instead of everything held in 1-day.  The schedule, topics and speakers are still being finalized and we will keep you updated as things develop.

True or False: Members in the MSEP 2011 can purchase prior military service

FALSE

Members of the MSEP 2011 may get automatic credit if they were employed by the state immediately prior to entering active duty military service and return to state employment within the timeframe specified by USERRA. However, purchase of prior active-duty military service credit is NOT available to members of MSEP 2011. You can view our  Purchasing and Transferring Service Guide for MSEP 2011 Members for more information.

What is a webinar?

Do your employees have questions about our webinars? Maybe they are unsure whether the online platform will work for them? In our spring PensionsPlus newsletter we included an article explaining the online webinar environment. The feedback we are receiving from our attendees has been extremely positive - they want more!

We now have webinars available for all stages of your employees’ careers. Please encourage them to read the What is a Webinar? article and to register for a session at their convenience.

Thank you for helping us spread the word! 

The Retirement Application was recently revised to include an agreement regarding MOSERS’ Board Rule on Separation of Service. Outdated paper versions of the Retirement Application will not be accepted and should be discarded. Please encourage employees to apply for retirement online by logging in to myMOSERS and selecting Retire Online from the menu. If an employee cannot apply online, they should contact a MOSERS benefit counselor who will send them a personalized paper form.