1) Important: Send all group insurance rate changes for January premiums by 12/02/2022 for on-time processing
The MTRS has temporarily hidden the Add Rates and Edit Rates buttons on the Insurance Rates screen in MyTRS. Over the last several months, we’ve noticed that some users were triggering a processing error, which required significant effort for MTRS staff to resolve for the monthly benefit warrant. We are working with our vendor to develop validations to prevent a user from triggering this processing error. Thus, you cannot add plan rates or edit plan rates at this time. We will notify you when the issue is resolved.
To that end, while plan rate changes are disabled in employer access, we ask all employers to send their retiree insurance changes by 12/02/2022 so we can enter them in time for the December warrant. If you do not have your new plan rates by 12/02/2022, please send them as soon as you receive them, and we’ll do our best to enter them by our warrant deadline. To request a rate change, please complete our Group Rate Premium Change form and email it to InsuranceUpdates@trb.state.ma.us.
Please see our Group Premium Change Form Instructions for guidance on completing the form. 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 > Insurance Rates. The carrier code for each plan is displayed in the 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. After receiving the email, please sign in to MyTRS to confirm that we entered your changes correctly to 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 process your changes. If you discover an issue with the rate change, please email us at InsuranceUpdates@trb.state.ma.us, with the subject of “RATE ERROR FOUND,” and we will prioritize processing.
The annual processing of January insurance rate changes on the December benefits warrant makes this one of the busiest times of the year for you and 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) Reminder: “Premium Holidays”
If your insurance carrier offers a premium break, we encourage you to coordinate directly with your carrier to facilitate the premium refund.
The MTRS cannot process short-term rate breaks with a price of $0.00, we can enter a rate of $.01 for a month and then re-enter the correct rate for the following month. We cannot enter a series of months with different costs for every plan. If you want us to change any of your rates to $0.01 for a particular month, you will need to submit a rate change form for the $.01 and a second rate change form with the restoration price.
If your premium “holiday” is equal to exactly one month’s premium, and $.01 will not suffice, you can enter it manually for your retirees. To do this in MyTRS, perform a cancel function to enter a stop date on each retiree’s deduction, then immediately enter a change function to add 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.
3) Reminder: 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 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 the subject of “ENABLE RETIREE.” Please remember that you need to click into Add/Change Coverage to find retirees who need coverage for the first time.
Questions?
If you have any questions, please send them to InsuranceUpdates@trb.state.ma.us.