Dear School District Superintendents, Charter School and Education Collaborative Directors, Business Managers, Payroll Officers, Personnel Administrators and Town Treasurers,
Please note these three timely updates regarding retiree insurance processing:
1) Global insurance rate changes for January: Please send these to us now, so that—as possible—the new premiums may be withheld from your retirees’ December payments.
If you have already submitted your global insurance rate changes for January, thank you; if not, at your earliest convenience, please complete our global premium rate change form and e-mail it to insuranceupdates@trb.state.ma.us.
After we complete your rate change request, we will send you an e-mail notifying you that your request has been processed. Upon your receipt of the notice, please sign into MyTRS and confirm that we entered your changes correctly; by proactively verifying your requested changes, you will prevent a small typo or oversight from becoming a large issue for your retired employees. If you discover an issue with the rate change, please e-mail us at insuranceupdates@trb.state.ma.us, with a subject of “RATE ERROR FOUND,” and we will give your message high priority in processing.
Please be assured that we will make every effort to enter global rate changes into MyTRS before our December warrant is processed and the deductions for January are withheld.
As we’re sure you know, however, the annual processing of January insurance rate changes makes this one of the busiest times of the year for you and for us. We thank you in advance for your cooperation and your patience.
2) Setting up brand new retirees for insurance deductions: We will now “enable” the insurance set up in MyTRS for new, soon-to-be retirees when we receive their retirement applications, so you no longer need to e-mail us to request this.
When retiree insurance access in MyTRS was first rolled out in February 2015, we asked employers to e-mail the MTRS to “enable” new retirees who qualify for insurance coverage. We’ve recently implemented a new process to allow us to “enable” all new retirees when their retirement applications are first received at the MTRS. Accordingly, you no longer need to e-mail 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, you will still need to send an e-mail to our insurance updates box, with a subject of “ENABLE RETIREE.” This is still required for existing retirees because, for those individuals, we will not have recently received a retirement application that would initiate our new enabling process.
3) Reminder regarding rate-wide premium insurance “holidays”: As of July 1, 2015, the MTRS no longer enters these, as employers can process them in MyTRS.
With direct access to retiree insurance functions in MyTRS, districts that would like to offer premium “holidays” can now process them in one sitting—simply sign into MyTRS, enter a stop on retirees’ deductions and, at the same time, enter a new rate line to restart the deductions a month later. With this process, you have full control over the rate “holiday” and avoid any complications that batch processing can present.