Retirement Security Starts With Reliable Participant Data
By: Vincent Pellegrino, Abacus Intel
How accurate participant data helps protect retirement security and ensure promised benefits are delivered. Participants move, change jobs, retire, and experience other life changes. Each change presents pension administrators with the same challenge: keeping participant records accurate. When information becomes outdated, plans may lose contact with participants, leading to missed communications and delays in delivering the benefits they have earned.
When we talk about retirement security, investment performance and funding levels usually take center stage. But behind every benefit payment is something just as important: accurate participant data.Participants move, change jobs, retire, and experience other life changes. Each change presents pension administrators with the same challenge: keeping participant records accurate. When information becomes outdated, plans may lose contact with participants, leading to missed communications and delays in delivering the benefits they have earned.
The importance of those benefits should not be underestimated. Research summarized by the Alliance for Prosperity and a Secure Retirement found that guaranteed lifetime income represented approximately 43% of total income for Americans age 65 and older in 2022, down from just over half in the early 2000s.1 As access to guaranteed income declines, public pensions remain an important source of financial stability for millions of workers and retirees. Delivering that security, however, depends on reliable participant information.
How Data Gaps Affect Retirement Security
For mid-sized public pension plans, maintaining accurate records can be especially challenging. Administrators must manage large participant populations while balancing limited resources, aging systems, and numerous reporting and compliance responsibilities. Even small data gaps can become time-consuming administrative problems when they remain unresolved. Outdated or incomplete records may contribute to:
- Continued payments following an unreported mortality event
- Delays in locating participants or beneficiaries
- Returned mail and missed communications
- Inaccurate participant counts and administrative records
- Difficulty documenting search efforts during an audit
These issues do more than create additional work for administrators. Participants have placed their trust in the retirement system and planned their futures around the benefits they have earned. Keeping their information accurate helps protect that trust and supports the timely delivery of benefits.
Data gaps can also affect a plan’s financial and operational health. Continued payments following an unidentified mortality event can reduce plan assets and require lengthy recovery efforts. At the same time, outdated contact or beneficiary information can prevent benefits from reaching the appropriate individuals.
Addressing Data Problems Earlier
Many plans wait until a participant applies for benefits to validate their information and resolve inconsistencies. By that point, administrators and outside partners may need to review years of records under tight deadlines.
Reviewing data earlier can make future benefit events easier and less costly to administer. Principal Financial Group notes that addressing inconsistencies before benefits begin may reduce administrative bottlenecks, limit manual work, and allow staff to focus on higher-value priorities.2
Plans can begin by reviewing two key areas:
- Demographic data:Birth dates, employment history, contact information, participant status, and other identifying details.
- Benefit information:The accuracy of each participant’s accrued benefit based on available employment and plan records.
This process does not have to begin with a major technology project. Administrators can first focus on records that carry the greatest financial or administrative risk, such as returned mail, long-unresponsive participants, incomplete beneficiary information, or payments requiring additional confirmation.
Plans with limited internal resources may also benefit from working with a data partner like Abacus Intel. An effective partner should cross-check multiple trusted sources, help locate and contact participants, and provide clear documentation of its findings. This multi-source approach can identify changes earlier, reduce manual research, and provide a more complete picture than relying on a single database.
From there, administrators can establish a review schedule, assign responsibility, and track unresolved cases through completion.
A clear audit trail should capture the research completed, outreach attempted, findings received, and actions taken. Together, these practices can help plans maintain accurate records and address potential issues before they interfere with benefit delivery.
A Stronger Foundation for Promised Benefits
Investment performance and funding policy will remain central to retirement security. However, retirement security also depends on a plan’s ability to maintain accurate records, protect plan assets, and deliver benefits to the right people at the right time.
Reliable participant data may operate behind the scenes, but it provides an essential foundation for every promised retirement benefit.
Vincent Pellegrino is an accomplished executive with more than 25 years of experience in the longevity risk and life settlement markets. In his role as Vice President of Sales at Abacus Intel, Vincent continues to drive business development initiatives, cultivate strategic partnerships, and apply his extensive knowledge to support the company’s growth and client success.
Vincent has held senior leadership roles at AIG, Credit Suisse, and Prudential Financial, where he shaped market strategies, enhanced operations, and sales, and ensured regulatory compliance. His areas of expertise include managing longevity-linked asset portfolios, negotiating large life insurance acquisitions, and implementing safeguards to ensure fund solvency and reduce fraud risk.
A recognized leader in his field, Vincent, has consistently contributed to advancing industry best practices while aligning institutional objectives with market opportunities. His ability to balance innovation with rigorous financial discipline has positioned him as a trusted advisor and respected figure within the financial services community.
1 Alliance for Prosperity and a Secure Retirement, “New Data: Two Keys to Retirement Security,” July 16, 2026.
2 Principal Financial Group, “Why Pension Data Quality May Be One of the Most Overlooked Drivers of Cost, Efficiency, and Risk,” June 24, 2026.