Regulations for Continuing Professional Education Requirements of the Joint Board for the Enrollment of Actuaries

JOINT BOARD FOR THE ENROLLMENT OF ACTUARIES <CFR>20 CFR Part 901</CFR> <DEPDOC>[REG-127915-17]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 1545-BQ30</RIN> <SUBJECT>Regulations for Continuing Professional Education Requirements of the Joint Board for the Enrollment of Actuaries</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Joint Board for the Enrollment of Actuaries. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Proposed rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This document sets forth proposed regulations that would amend the continuing professional education requirements for actuaries enrolled by the Joint Board for the Enrollment of Actuaries (Joint Board). These proposed regulations would remove the physical presence requirement for formal continuing professional education programs required for active enrolled actuaries and the physical location requirement from course certifications. These proposed regulations also would modify the continuing professional education requirement for certain actuaries who seek to return to active enrollment from inactive status due to their failure to timely satisfy the renewal requirements in the first enrollment cycle after their initial enrollment cycle. Finally, the proposed regulations would add a requirement that certificates of instruction for continuing professional education courses include the number of hours counted towards the required number of hours for formal programs. These proposed regulations solely address the enrollment rules of the Joint Board and do not affect pension plans, plan participants, or the general public. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Written or electronic comments and requests for a public hearing must be received by April 15, 2024. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Commenters are strongly encouraged to submit public comments electronically. Submit electronic submissions via the Federal eRulemaking Portal at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> (indicate IRS and REG-127915-17) by following the online instructions for submitting comments. Requests for a public hearing must be submitted as prescribed in the “Comments and Requests for a Public Hearing” section. Once submitted to the Federal eRulemaking Portal, comments cannot be edited or withdrawn. Because the Joint Board's Executive Director office is within the IRS Return Preparer Office, the Department of the Treasury (the Treasury Department) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will publish for public availability any comment, whether submitted electronically or on paper, to its public docket. The Treasury Department and the IRS are collecting comments on behalf of the Joint Board. Send paper submissions to: CC:PA:01:PR (REG-127915-17), Room 5203, Internal Revenue Service, P.O. Box 7604, Ben Franklin Station, Washington, DC 20044. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Thomas Curtin, Executive Director, Joint Board for the Enrollment of Actuaries at (202) 317-3559; concerning submission of comments, the public hearing, and the access code to attend the hearing by telephone, Vivian Hayes at (202) 317-6901 (not toll-free numbers) or <E T="03">publichearings@IRS.gov</E> (not toll-free numbers). </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> This document sets forth proposed amendments to 20 CFR part 901 under section 3042 of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (88 Stat. 829), Public Law 93-406 (ERISA). Section 3042 of ERISA provides that the Joint Board shall, by regulations, establish reasonable standards and qualifications for persons performing actuarial services with respect to plans to which ERISA applies and, upon application by any individual, will enroll such individual if the Joint Board finds that such individual satisfies such standards and qualifications. The Joint Board's Executive Director and staff are located within the IRS's Return Preparer Office, and, accordingly, the Treasury Department and the IRS are assisting with the drafting of these proposed regulations. Section 901.11 of the Joint Board regulations provides enrollment procedures for the Joint Board, including continuing professional education requirements for enrolled actuaries. Section 901.11(d) provides that, to maintain active enrollment to perform actuarial services under ERISA, each enrolled actuary is required to periodically renew enrollment. Pursuant to section 901.11(d)(1), the process for renewing enrollment as an enrolled actuary with the Joint Board occurs on a three-year cycle. Part of the renewal process includes a certification that the actuary satisfied a continuing professional education requirement. Pursuant to section 901.11(e)(2)(i), 36 hours of continuing professional education credits are required within the three-year cycle for every enrolled actuary. For newly enrolled actuaries, however, the 36-hour requirement is reduced pursuant to section 901.11(e)(2)(ii) or (iii) depending on the particular year of the three-year cycle in which the actuary enrolled. Under these rules, those who initially enroll during the first year of an enrollment cycle must complete 24 hours of continuing professional education; those who enroll during the second year of an enrollment cycle must complete 12 hours of continuing professional education; and those who enroll during the third year of an enrollment cycle are exempt from the continuing professional education requirements until the next enrollment cycle. Pursuant to section 901.11(f)(1), in order to earn their required continuing professional education credits, enrolled actuaries must attend qualifying programs (as defined in section 901.11(f)(2)) conducted by qualifying sponsors (as defined in section 901.11(f)(3)) and at least a third of the credits must be earned by attending a formal program (as defined in section 901.11(f)(2)(ii)). Formal programs under section 901.11(f)(2) are required to include an in-person element, and special rules apply depending on whether the enrolled actuary is participating in the program as a participant or as an instructor (physical presence requirement). A program participant must simultaneously participate in the program in the same physical location with at least two other participants engaged in substantive pension service, and the participants must have the opportunity to interact with a qualified individual who serves as an instructor (whether or not in the same physical location). Instructors, however, must be in the physical presence of at least three other individuals engaged in substantive pension service. Section 901.11(f)(3) defines qualifying sponsors as organizations recognized by the Executive Director of the Joint Board whose programs offer opportunities for continuing professional education. Pursuant to section 901.11(f)(3)(iv), upon verification of successful completion of a qualifying program, the program's qualifying sponsor must furnish each individual who successfully completed the qualifying program with a certificate listing certain information, including the location of the program. Section 901.11(f)(3)(v) further requires that the program's qualifying sponsor must furnish to each instructor, discussion leader, or speaker a certificate listing certain information, including the location of the program. An actuary who fails to timely satisfy the requirements for renewal of enrollment is placed in inactive status pursuant to section 901.11(l)(4). Section 901.11(l)(7)(i) specifies the continuing professional education requirements for actuaries who seek to return to active enrollment after being placed in inactive status. Currently, under section 901.11(l)(7), all actuaries in their first inactive enrollment cycle, including newly enrolled actuaries, must complete 36 hours of qualifying continuing professional education in order to return to active status. That is, section 901.11(l)(7)(i) disregards the special rules under section 901.11(e)(2)(ii) or (iii) that prorate the number of hours of continuing professional education required for newly enrolled actuaries based on the year of their initial enrollment. Prior to the commencement of the COVID-19 pandemic, some interested parties had sent comments to the Joint Board expressing the view that the physical presence requirement is outdated and imposes a burden on actuaries who are unable, for health, safety, or other reasons, to meet the physical presence requirement. Once the COVID-19 pandemic commenced, qualifying sponsors were prevented from conducting in-person continuing professional education programs. As a result, and consistent with its waiver authority under section 901.11(k), the Joint Board announced in August of 2020, via a news release (IR-2020-177, August 10, 2020), and notified all enrolled actuaries and qualifying sponsors, that the Joint Board was waiving the physical presence requirement for continuing professional education programs through the end of the enrollment cycle ending on December 31, 2022. The Joint Board announced in March of 2024, and notified all enrolled actuaries and qualifying sponsors, that the waiver was being extended. The extended waiver applies to continuing professional education credits earned for programs held during the period from January 1, 2023, through the date that is 30 days after the publication of the Treasury decision finalizing these proposed regulations. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Explanation of Provisions</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD2">A. Modification of Definition of Formal Program</HD> This document sets forth proposed regulations that would amend section 901.11 of the Joint Board regulations to remove the physical presence requirement from the definition of a formal program. After considering the input of interested parties and taking into account the successful operation of the continuing professional education programs that were conducted during the COVID-19 p ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 32k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━