Occasionally, you will find a pending enrollment for an employee who is no longer employed by your organization. You may be wondering, “What do I do with this enrollment?” If the employee did work for you in a position that met membership criteria and contributions were reported or will be reported, please submit the enrollment. 

The Arizona State Retirement System (ASRS) provides a health insurance premium benefit to qualified retirees and employees who receive a long-term disability (LTD) income benefit. In order to ensure your retirees and LTD recipients who elect health insurance receive the correct premium benefit subsidy, the ASRS annually requests that employers provide their updated Health Insurance Plans and Premiums for the following benefit year. 

Internal Revenue Code (IRC) section 401(a)17 is a limit on compensation beyond which no further retirement contributions may be deducted from an employee’s earnable salary for a given year. This limit applies to all ASRS members, but the actual maximum differs depending on the member’s enrollment date.

Do you have an employee who you submitted a long term disability (LTD) claim packet for, or an employee that is currently on LTD? If you answered yes to either of these questions, please note the following:

The Employer Administrator is responsible for authorizing access to the applications available on the ASRS secure employer website for registered employer users.

Each employer must certify the amount of member and employer contributions on each payroll and submit that amount to the ASRS on a due date prescribed by the ASRS Board of Trustees. (A.R.S. § 38-735)

Retirement can be an exciting yet challenging time for soon-to-be retirees. While employers play an important part after a member retires by ensuring we receive their Ending Payroll Verification form in a timely manner, you can also play an important role before an employee retires. 

Each year the ASRS conducts reviews of employer accounts to ensure that our employer partners follow guidelines established in Arizona Revised Statutes (A.R.S.) 38-711 through 38-794, as well as Arizona Administrative Code (AAC) Title 2 Chapter 8.

The Employer Relations Team has started its annual planning and preparation for the ASRS Employer Basics 2023 webinars. We took lessons learned from our first live presentations in 2022 and will be offering Basics as a series of interactive webinars rather than a 3-hour-plus online workshop.

The ASRS Employer Basics webinar is essentially a walk-through of the ASRS Employer Manual. We cover topics such as membership eligibility, enrollment processing, contribution reporting, health insurance premium benefits, long term disability, and hiring retirees, just to name a few. 

From September through the first week of October, the Employer Relations Team hosted eight virtual Employer Conferences. This year’s conference was designed much differently from previous virtual conferences in answer to feedback from the 2021 conferences.