Central States Pension Fund After $35.8B SFA: What Filings Show

What PBGC approved, and when

Three PBGC documents give the award. The press release of December 8, 2022 announced it; the weekly status workbook gives the exact figures and dates; a PBGC statement of April 8, 2024 covers the repayment.

Source: PBGC, “PBGC Approves SFA Application for Central States Plan” (press release, December 8, 2022); PBGC SFA application status workbook, updated November 6, 2026; PBGC, “Statement on Central States’ Repayment of $126.5 Million in Special Financial Assistance” (April 8, 2024). The workbook footnote says the requested amount is adjusted for interest and other items.

The press release called it “the largest plan expected to receive SFA.” It also said the plan covers 357,056 participants and “was projected to run out of money in 2025.” The participant count equals the end-of-2021 total on the plan’s Form 5500 for plan year 2021 (357,056), which suggests the approval used a census as of that date.

The repayment is the part most Central States pages leave out. PBGC says the plan “returned to the U.S. Government more than $126.5 million—the portion of the SFA amount paid to the plan based on inaccurate participant census data.” The workbook puts the exact figure at $126,656,953.79, which is 48.4% of the $261,911,473.98 listed as repaid by all plans on the same tab (our arithmetic). We did not find, in the documents we saved, how many participants the correction involved, so we do not state it.

How the money may be invested

The rule that governs the account is 29 CFR 4262.14. It requires the plan to “segregate special financial assistance assets and earnings thereon” in a separate account. Inside it, the rule is not “bonds only,” as it is often summarized:

Source: 29 CFR 4262.14 (eCFR, current text as of November 1, 2026).

The plan’s Schedule H lists assets in the whole trust, not in the SFA account alone. At the end of plan year 2025 it reported $28,558,739,000 in U.S. government securities, $7,779,504,315 in corporate debt (the dataset column is “preferred”), $1,817,750 in common stock, $10,708,481,294 in “other loans” and $10,837,744,923 in “other liabilities.” The dataset does not explain the last two lines and we did not find an explanation in the documents we saved, so we only note that the two are of similar size. Schedule H does not split the trust into an SFA account and the rest, so it cannot show whether the account stays inside the rule. PBGC’s press release says: “SFA and earnings thereon must be segregated from other plan assets and may be used only to pay plan benefits and administrative expenses.”

What happens after 2051

The SFA amount is not sized to pay benefits for life. 29 CFR 4262.2 defines the SFA coverage period as ending “on the last day of the last plan year ending in 2051.” The amount is the lowest figure for which projected assets stay at or above zero in every plan year of that period (29 CFR 4262.4(a)(1)); it is a projection on required assumptions, not a promise for the years that follow.

The PBGC press release says SFA “will enable the plan to continue to pay retirement benefits without reduction for many years into the future,” and gives no year. We could not read the plan’s own annual funding notice or its SFA application on PBGC’s site for this page, so we do not state a projected insolvency date after SFA. If the plan did become insolvent after 2051, PBGC’s multiemployer guarantee would apply, and it is much smaller than a typical benefit:

Source: PBGC, “Multiemployer Benefit Guarantees.” PBGC guarantees “100% of the first $11 of the monthly benefit rate, plus 75% of the next $33 of the monthly benefit rate,” a limit of $35.75 a month per year of service. It “is not adjusted for inflation or cost-of-living increases.”

Worked example (our arithmetic). A retiree with 30 years of credited service whose plan benefit is $3,000 a month has a benefit rate of $100 per year of service. The guarantee counts only the first $44 of it, at 100% of $11 and 75% of $33, so $35.75 a month per year of service, or $1,072.50 a month, which is 35.75% of $3,000. The PBGC page on single-employer plans is a different table; our PBGC maximum guarantee page covers it and says it does not apply to multiemployer plans like this one.

The plan’s balance sheet and funding, 2021 to 2025

Schedule H of Form 5500 is the plan’s balance sheet. The Department of Labor publishes the data for each filing; the figures below are for plan number 001 of employer identification number 36-6044243.

Source: Department of Labor Form 5500 data sets (Schedule H and Schedule MB), filings 20221012101900NAL0022146593001, 20231012170600NAL0064554290001, 20241010114606NAL0020013073001, 20251009120410NAL0011410432001 and 20261014154800NAL0007114338001.

Four things stand out.

• Net assets rose by $33.32 billion in plan year 2022 (from $8,158,227,818 to $41,480,610,130, our arithmetic), the year PBGC approved the award, which was paid in January 2023. That is consistent with the award being booked at the 2022 year-end (our reading; the data set does not say).
• Net assets have since fallen from $41,776,279,289 at the end of 2023 to $38,338,530,996 at the end of 2025, a decline of $3.44 billion (our arithmetic). In plan year 2025 total income was $2,933,483,533 and total expenses $2,940,094,694, a net result of minus $6,611,161 (our arithmetic); benefits paid were $2,862,188,161 against employer contributions of $419,548,270.
• The funded percentage barely moved. It is 15.7% for plan year 2025. The Schedule MB asset values in the same filing are $5,938,770,504 and $7,260,882,046 on the two asset data items, against $38.3 billion of net assets on Schedule H, so the percentage is evidently not measured against the full balance sheet. The data set does not say why, and we did not save the actuary’s attachment that would. We therefore do not read the 15.7% as a measure of the plan’s solvency.
• The reported valuation interest rate changed. Schedule MB shows 2.00% for plan years 2021 and 2022, 4.00% for 2023 and 2024 and 4.75% for 2025, and the risk-status code reads D for 2021 and 2022 and C for 2023 to 2025. We did not save the Schedule MB instructions, so we do not translate the codes.

Participants

Source: Form 5500 main form data for the same five filings (end-of-year counts). “Total participants” is the form’s total of active, retired or separated, and beneficiaries.

The count of total participants is down 33,334 from the end of 2021 (9.3%, our arithmetic). Active participants are down 28.3%. Employer contributions of $419,548,270 in 2025 cover about 14.7% of the $2,862,188,161 of benefits paid (our arithmetic).

The benefit cuts that never took effect

The 2014 law created a path to cut benefits in plans that would otherwise run out of money. Central States took it. Treasury’s letter of May 6, 2016 says the plan applied on September 25, 2015, that “approximately 270,000 people would have some portion of their pension benefits reduced beginning in July” 2016, and that Treasury decided to deny the application “because the suspension fails to satisfy the statutory criteria for approval of benefit suspensions.” Treasury named three criteria that failed: the suspension must be “reasonably estimated to achieve, but not materially exceed, the level that is necessary to avoid insolvency,” because the investment return and entry-age assumptions were not reasonable; the suspensions must be equitably distributed; and the notices must be understandable to the average participant. The application used a 7.5% annual investment return assumption.

That application was denied, so the suspension it described was not approved. The sources on this page show no approved MPRA suspension for the plan.

The program around it

Source: PBGC SFA application status workbook, updated November 6, 2026; 29 CFR 4262.10(d). The workbook’s Waiting List tab says the application portal “will remain open through 12/31/2026.” On December 8, 2022, PBGC said it had approved over $45.3 billion to plans covering over 550,000 workers, retirees and beneficiaries.

The “173 plans” figure is ours. PBGC’s workbook is a list of applications, and some plans appear twice, so a plan count needs de-duplication by plan number. We counted unique employer identification numbers with plan number on the Approved tab.

What a reader can do with this

1. Get the plan’s own number for you. The monthly benefit on your statement is what the plan owes; PBGC’s guarantee is only a backstop, and the table above shows how far below a typical benefit it sits.
2. Read your annual funding notice with this page beside it. Compare the reported funded percentage with the Schedule MB history above and note that the SFA is held in a separate account.
3. Check the spouse and survivor option before you retire or if you are already receiving. Our joint and survivor page explains how the reduction and spousal consent work in general; this plan’s own rules are in its summary plan description.
4. For a spouse or heir, ask the plan what happens to the benefit on death and what documents it needs; do not assume the answer from a different plan.
5. Do not assume 2051 is a cliff. It is the end of the period the SFA amount was sized for, under projections that were required to use set assumptions.

FAQ

Sources, read and saved on November 10, 2026: PBGC press release “PBGC Approves SFA Application for Central States Plan” (December 8, 2022); PBGC SFA application status workbook (updated November 6, 2026) and PBGC’s SFA application and program pages; PBGC statement on the Central States repayment (April 8, 2024); PBGC, “Multiemployer Benefit Guarantees”; 29 CFR 4262.2, 4262.3, 4262.4, 4262.10 and 4262.14 (eCFR, text as of November 1, 2026); Treasury, letter to the Central States trustees denying the benefit suspension application (May 6, 2016); Department of Labor Form 5500 data sets for plan years 2021 to 2025 (main form, Schedule H, Schedule MB). The plan’s own website was unreachable when we tried it. Percentages, sums, differences and the worked example are our arithmetic. This is analysis of public documents, not investment, legal or tax advice.