Before the end of 2026, sponsors of calendar-year, single-employer retirement plans should review their plans and adopt any needed amendments to satisfy the requirements of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) and ERISA. This Client Action Bulletin highlights the key amendments and administrative items that defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) plan sponsors should address in the last quarter of 2026.

Plan amendments to qualified DB and DC plans

Each year, plan sponsors of individually designed plans should check to see if any plan amendments are listed in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Required Amendments List (RA List). The RA List is the annual list of all the amendments necessary for individually designed plans to retain their tax-qualified status. Plan sponsors generally have until the end of the second calendar year following the list’s publication to adopt these amendments.

Required amendments for legislative changes. Although certain changes under the SECURE Act¹ and SECURE 2.0 Act must already be reflected in plan administration—and plans that elected to provide the coronavirus-related relief available under the CARES Act² were required to operate in accordance with that relief during the applicable period—the general deadline for nongovernmental, noncollectively bargained plans to adopt amendments for these three laws is December 31, 2026, except as noted below.

• Required minimum distribution (RMD) rule changes. The 2025 RA List (Notice 2025-60) extended the amendment deadline to December 31, 2027, for adopting mandatory amendments related to the following RMD changes under IRC Section 401(a)(9) that were finalized by the 2024 final regulations.³
• RMD age increases: the statutory increases to the RMD age from 70½ to 72, 73, and eventually 75 (depending on the participant's birth year), affecting both DB and DC plans.
• The 10-year post-death rule: changes to DC plans requiring a deceased participant’s benefit to be entirely distributed to a designated beneficiary by the end of the calendar year containing the 10th anniversary of the participant’s death, unless the individual qualifies as an eligible designated beneficiary.
• Terminating plans. If a plan is terminating and the plan termination date precedes December 31, 2026, any required amendments must be adopted by the time of the plan termination.

Extended amendment timelines remain in place for other plan types. The deadline is December 31, 2028, for collectively bargained plans, and December 31, 2029, for all governmental plan types—including governmental qualified plans, public school 403(b) plans, and governmental 457(b) plans. Please refer to our Client Action Bulletin about IRS Notice 2024-2 for more details on the amendment deadlines.

For amendments in the 2024 RA List (Notice 2024-82), the deadline is December 31, 2026. The 2024 RA List did not include any required amendments that generally would apply to most individually designed plans. However, it identified two limited changes that may require amendment:

• IRC Section 415 limits for certain rural electric cooperatives under Section 119 of SECURE 2.0
• Family attribution rules under Section 315 of SECURE 2.0

Any SECURE 2.0 provisions still awaiting finalized regulations (such as certain remaining RMD rules or the Roth catch-up contributions) will appear in future RA Lists, which will generally delay their amendment due dates to the end of the second plan year after the regulation appears on the RA List.⁴

Discretionary amendments for optional plan changes. Plan documents should also be reviewed before the end of 2026 to ensure that discretionary or operational features comply with ERISA and the IRC. A discretionary amendment is an optional change a plan sponsor chooses to implement, such as modifying a benefit formula, changing vesting schedules, or altering optional forms of payment, rather than an amendment required by law.

Subject to the anti-cutback rules described below, plan sponsors that made discretionary plan changes to their qualified plans during 2026 must formally adopt the related plan amendments by December 31, 2026.

Under the anti-cutback rules in IRC Section 411(d)(6), an amendment cannot retroactively reduce or eliminate benefits that have already been accrued. Therefore, discretionary amendments that reduce or eliminate benefits must be adopted prospectively, before participants earn the affected benefits. In addition, if the amendment applies to a DB plan, participants affected by the cutback must receive notice at least 45 days before the amendment’s effective date.

Discretionary plan amendments that adopt optional provisions under prior legislation, such as the SECURE Act or SECURE 2.0, may later require a corresponding required amendment once final regulations governing those provisions are issued. Any such changes will be reflected in future RA Lists, and the deadline for adopting those required amendments generally will be the end of the second plan year after the applicable item appears on the RA List.

However, for optional provisions already implemented in operation, Part C of the 2024 RA List establishes a firm amendment adoption deadline of December 31, 2026. Plan sponsors must execute plan amendments by this date if they previously chose to operate any of the following optional legislative relief features:

• In-service coronavirus-related distributions
• RMDs, subject to the extended deadline discussed above
• Qualified birth or adoption distributions (QBADs) and their associated three-year repayment terms
• Minimum age for in-service distributions from DB plans
• Safe harbor plan changes, including the increased deferral caps for Qualified Automatic Contribution Arrangements (QACAs)
• Small, immediate financial incentives offered to employees for making plan contributions
• Increased contribution limits for SIMPLE 401(k) plans
• Replacement of a SIMPLE retirement account with a safe harbor 401(k) plan during the year
• Cash balance plan testing for plans that use a variable interest crediting rate
• Employer matching or nonelective contributions designated as Roth contributions
• Anti-abuse rules for pension-linked emergency savings accounts (PLESAs)
• Exceptions to the 10% additional tax on early distributions for emergency personal expenses or victims of domestic abuse

We summarized the guidance that should be reflected in the amendment here.

Correcting failures to amend a retirement plan on time

As part of any thorough year-end plan review, sponsors should confirm that all required or discretionary amendments for plan years prior to 2026 were timely adopted and executed. For example, the deadline for required plan amendments to comply with the SECURE Act and SECURE 2.0 Act for calendar-year, nongovernmental, tax-exempt entity 457(b) deferred compensation plans was December 31, 2025.

If a plan sponsor discovers a failure to adopt either a required or discretionary plan amendment, it should consider correcting the mistake through the IRS’s Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System (EPCRS). See IRS Revenue Procedure 2021-30. The IRS has issued the following interim guidance on the EPCRS:

• IRS Notice 2023-43 provides interim guidance allowing plans to self-correct certain eligible inadvertent failures (EIFs) under Section 305 of the SECURE 2.0 Act. Plan sponsors may be able to self-correct EIFs without contacting the IRS or paying a fee, provided the corrective action is taken in a timely manner.
• IRS Notice 2024-77 provides interim guidance on Section 301(b) of the SECURE 2.0 Act, regarding inadvertent benefit overpayments and the correction of inadvertent benefit overpayments.

If an EPCRS filing is required to correct a plan amendment failure under the IRS Voluntary Correction Program (VCP), the filing fee (user fee) ranges from $2,000 to $4,000, based on the amount of net plan assets, and can be substantially less than the monetary sanctions that may be assessed if the IRS audits the plan and discovers a late amendment or a failure to adopt an amendment.

Important Q4 compliance deadlines and notices

In addition to plan amendments, a variety of important filings and participant notices are due during the fourth quarter.

• For DC plans, key participant notices include automatic enrollment, safe harbor, qualified default investment alternative (QDIA), employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) diversification, summary annual report, quarterly or annual benefit statements, and notices to terminated vested employees reported on Form 8955-SSA. Key filings include Form 5500; Form 8955-SSA; Form 990, if extended, for tax-exempt organizations; and Form 1120 for reporting corporate income tax and deductible employer contributions.
• For single-employer DB plans, important fourth-quarter participant notices include notices to terminated vested employees reported on Form 8955-SSA, the annual funding notice for small plans, funding-based limitation notices for plans subject to IRC Section 436 benefit restrictions, and the annual benefit statement availability notice. Principal filings include Form 5500, Form 8955-SSA, and the annual Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) premium filing. In addition, if the plan used a range certification, the final 2026 adjusted funding target attainment percentage (AFTAP) must be certified by year-end, and any election to reduce or revoke a prior election to use the carryover and/or prefunding balance also must be made by year-end.

Benefit statements. Plan sponsors also should review their benefit statement delivery procedures and timing. On February 25, 2026, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) issued a proposed rule implementing SECURE 2.0’s paper benefit statement requirement. In general, the proposed rule provides that, for DC plans, at least one benefit statement in each calendar year must be furnished on paper. For DB plans, at least one paper benefit statement must be provided every three calendar years, unless the plan uses the alternative annual notice of availability. The statutory paper benefit statement requirement applies to plan years beginning after December 31, 2025. The proposed rule also describes two exceptions to the paper benefit statement requirement, which we summarize here. Absent such exceptions, the following apply:

• Calendar-year, participant-directed DC plans can generally satisfy the 2026 paper statement requirement with the fourth-quarter 2026 statement, which would ordinarily be due February 14, 2027.
• Calendar-year, nonparticipant-directed DC plans can generally satisfy the 2026 paper-statement requirement with the annual 2026 statement, due by the Form 5500 due date (including extensions), or earlier if the Form 5500 is filed earlier.
• DB plans that do not use the alternative annual notice generally would not need to furnish their first paper statement before the 2026 plan year, depending on the plan’s existing three-year statement cycle.

On May 12, 2026, the DOL issued Field Assistance Bulletin 2026-02, stating that it will not take enforcement action against plan administrators that comply in good faith with a reasonable interpretation of the proposed rule and ERISA’s benefit statement requirement until final regulations or other administrative guidance are issued.

Optional notice to unenrolled participants in DC plans. Section 320 of the SECURE 2.0 Act permits DC plans, including 401(k) and 403(b) plans, to forego providing otherwise required annual notices to unenrolled participants and instead provide them an easy-to-understand annual reminder notice explaining their eligibility to participate in the plan, any applicable deadlines for doing so, and the plan’s key benefits and rights, including any employer contributions and vesting provisions. The unenrolled participant must also be provided any other document they specifically request that they are otherwise entitled to receive.

For this purpose, unenrolled participants are generally employees who:

• Are eligible to participate in the plan but are not participating (e.g., have not begun making salary deferral contributions to the plan, either due to opting out of automatic enrollment before automatic salary deferrals begin or not affirmatively making a salary deferral election)
• Were furnished the Summary Plan Description (SPD) and any other required notices in connection with initial eligibility to participate in the plan

For DC plans that choose to use this simplified alternative annual notice approach for unenrolled participants, the annual reminder notice should be furnished to them either during the “annual open season election period” for the plan or within a “reasonable period” before the beginning of the next plan year.

A full list of 2026 key administrative dates and deadlines for DB and DC plans can be found here. The 2027 calendars will be published soon.

For assistance with year-end compliance reviews, plan amendments, or preapproved plan availability, please contact your Milliman consultant.

¹ Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act

² Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act

³ Please refer to our summary of the 2024 final RMD regulations for more details on these provisions. Our summary of Notice 2025-60 can be found here.

⁴ We summarized the IRS clarification of amendment deadlines for changes under the SECURE Act and SECURE 2.0.