Background:Pub. L. 105-311, the Federal Employees Life Insurance Improvement Act, enacted October 30, 1998, increased the amount of coverage available under Option C. We issued Benefits Administration Letter (BAL) 99-203 on February 9, 1999, to provide guidance on the changes to Option C. Pub. L. 105-311 created a 3-year demonstration project for the portability of Option B. BAL 99-210, issued April 29, 1999, provided instructions for implementing portability and transmitted a Portability Notice for agencies and employees to use until the new form (SF 2825) is ready.

Purpose:The purpose of this BAL is to change some of the information previously issued regarding Option C and portability and to provide a revised Portability Notice.

OPTION C

New Information:Employees who elect or increase Option C due to a life event can elect whatever number of multiples they want, up to the maximum of 5.

What Do Agencies Have to Do?:You must contact employees who have already made an Option C election due to a life event occurring during the time periods shown below and offer them the opportunity to increase their Option C coverage up to 5 multiples.

Employees whose life event occurred between October 30, 1998, and April 23, 1999, must make this election within 60 days of your notification to them. The increased Option C coverage will be retroactive to April 24, 1999, and the employees must pay the back premiums.

Employees whose life event occurred on or after April 24, 1999, also must make this election within 60 days of your notification to them. The increased Option C coverage will be retroactive to the same effective date as the Option C coverage they already elected due to the life event, and the employees must pay the back premiums.

PLEASE NOTE: This applies only to Option C. There is no change in the way the allowable number of Option B multiples is determined due to a life event.

ALSO NOTE: An employee described above who made an open enrollment election to increase the multiples of Option C may choose to allow that election to stand, instead of changing his/her election retroactive to the previous effective date. However, by doing so, the employee will have to meet the full 5-year requirement for the multiples elected during open enrollment before he/she can continue them into retirement.

Material Affected:Because of this change, the FEGLI Booklet (RI 76-21 [RI 76-20 for Postal employees]) is no longer accurate. We have prepared an addendum to the FEGLI Booklet (copy attached) showing the new information.

You must distribute a copy of this addendum to all of your agency's employees, so they may put it with their copy of the FEGLI Booklet. You must also give the addendum to any new employees or newly eligible employees when you give them the FEGLI Booklet.

Future shipments of the FEGLI Booklet will include copies of the addendum.

PORTABILITY

Problem with Notice: BAL 99-210 contained detailed information about portability and transmitted a Portability Notice to be used until the SF 2825 is ready. However, the Portability Notice didn't include a place for the employee's address and phone number. Since this information is also not on the SF 2821, MetLife has no address to use to send the individual a bill for the ported coverage.

Fix: We have attached a revised Portability Notice, which includes a space for the employee's address and phone number. Agencies must give eligible employees this revised notice, instead of the one attached to BAL 99-210.

Reminder: When an individual applies to port coverage, the designations, assignments, and court orders that you send to MetLife must be the originals, not copies.

Important Change to Portability Time Frames: In BAL 99-210 we gave the time frames for applying to port Option B as 31 days from the date of the terminating event.

To make sure that agencies have sufficient time to get the Portability Notice to the employee - especially agencies operating on a monthly pay period - we are changing this time frame. The new time frame is 60 days from the date of the event.

We consider a mailed notice to be received 5 days after it is sent. Therefore the Portability Notice will be considered to be on time if the employing office receives it by the 65th day after the terminating event (or by the 79th day after the terminating event, if the individual lives overseas).

Attachments:
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