1) Send all group insurance rate changes for January by 11/5/2021 for on-time processing
We are asking all employers to send their retiree insurance changes by November 5th so we can enter them earlier and be more available to provide training and support during the upcoming MyTRS release. If you do not have your new plan rates by November 5th, please send them as soon as possible and we’ll do our best to get them entered on-time. To request a rate change, please complete our
Group Rate Premium Change form and email it to insuranceupdates@trb.state.ma.us.
For guidance on completing the form, please see our Group Premium Change Form Instructions. Important note: To ensure new rates are applied to the correct plans, the forms for updating existing plans require you to enter the proper carrier codes or the form will be returned as incomplete. To locate your carrier code, look up your plans in MyTRS > View Insurance Premium Rates. The carrier code for each plan is displayed in the Insurance Plan column, in parentheses.
After we complete your rate change request, we will send you an email notifying you that your request has been processed. Once you have been contacted, please sign in to MyTRS and confirm that we entered your changes correctly. This will prevent a small typo or oversight from becoming a large issue for your retired employees. (Note: Group rate changes are updated overnight, so you will not see the corrected rate until the day after we processed your changes.) If you discover an issue with the rate change, please email us at insuranceupdates@trb.state.ma.us, with a subject of “RATE ERROR FOUND,” and we will prioritize processing.
The annual processing of January insurance rate changes makes this one of the busiest times of the year for you and for us. Please be assured that we will make every effort to enter group rate changes into MyTRS before our December warrant is processed and the deductions for January are withheld.
2) The new MyTRS will include a requested insurance feature
The MTRS is scheduled to release a new version of MyTRS in late November 2021. Our updated version will now allow employers to change global rates directly in the system! For most employers, this will be the last time you will need to send forms to change your insurance plan rates. We will provide more details on how this feature will work during MyTRS training in the coming weeks, with the intent that employers will be able to begin making changes in spring 2022.
3) Reminder regarding “Premium Holidays”
The MTRS does not process short-term rate breaks, one-time rates or premium holidays as a policy since 2015.
If your insurance carrier is offering such a break, we encourage that you coordinate directly with your carrier to facilitate the premium refund.
If your premium “holiday” is equal to exactly one month’s premium, you can enter it manually for your retirees by signing into MyTRS, entering a stop date on each retirees’ deduction and immediately entering a new rate line to restart the deduction a month later. With this process, you have full control over the rate “holiday” and can avoid any complications that batch processing can present.
4) Setting up brand new retirees for insurance deductions: We “enable” the insurance setup in MyTRS for new, soon-to-be retirees when we receive their retirement applications
When the MTRS receives a retirement application for a soon-to-be retiree, we “enable” your ability to set up their insurance in MyTRS. Accordingly, you do not need to email us before you can set up new retirees for insurance deductions. However, for existing retirees who are obtaining any kind of coverage for the first time—or if it appears that we accidentally forgot to enable a retiree for you—you will need to send an email to our insurance updates box, with a subject of “ENABLE RETIREE.”
Questions?
If you have any questions, please send them to insuranceupdates@trb.state.ma.us.