Keeping your retirement plan document current

The second quarter of 2025 saw little legislative and governmental regulatory activity in the retirement plan area. So this month, we’re offering a helpful reminder of your responsibility as a plan sponsor to keep your plan documents updated for current laws, as well as some upcoming deadlines you should know to amend and restate 401(k) and 403(b) plans to comply with IRS rules.

A little background

A 401(k) or 403(b) plan document is a written agreement that describes the retirement benefits an employer provides to its employees. As such, your plan document must comply with specific IRS rules. Failure to maintain a current plan document can jeopardize your plan’s qualified status, result in IRS and/or Department of Labor sanctions and penalties, and increase the potential likelihood of DOL and/or participant litigation.

The IRS requires preapproved 401(k) and 403(b) plans to be restated in their entirety approximately every six years. Additionally, the IRS often requires plans to be amended for legislative and regulatory changes occurring in between plan restatements.

With all that in mind, let’s take a look at the restatement and amendment deadlines for those employers that have adopted a preapproved plan with UBT’s Retirement Plan Services team.

403(b) plan restatement: Cycle 2

Employers that use UBT’s pre-approved 403(b) document must adopt a restated Cycle 2 document no later than December 31, 2026. Our Retirement Plan Services team will reach out to their 403(b) clients in the first half of 2026 about restating the plan document before the end of next year.

401(k) plan restatement: Cycle 4

The IRS has not set a deadline for preapproved 401(k) plan sponsors to adopt a Cycle 4 restatement. Plan document providers and the IRS are currently negotiating the Cycle 4 plan document language. The IRS has indicated it wants to issue Cycle 4 Opinion Letters in August 2026. If this timeline holds, then 401(k) plan sponsors will have until September 2028 to adopt their Cycle 4 restatements.

Plan amendments

All 401(k) and 403(b) plan sponsors — including those sponsors who do not use preapproved documents — must amend their plans in accordance with recently enacted major legislation, including the SECURE Act of 2019, the CARES Act, and the SECURE 2.0 Act as follows.

• Non-Governmental Qualified Plan/Tax-Exempt 403(b) Plan Deadline: Qualified plans (other than governmental plans), as well as 403(b) plans adopted by tax-exempt employers, must adopt these amendments no later than December 31, 2026.
• Governmental Qualified Plan/Governmental 403(b) Plan Deadline: Governmental qualified plans, as well as 403(b) plans sponsored by public schools, must adopt these amendments no later than December 31, 2029.

Most employers using a preapproved document from UBT have already adopted a CARES Act amendment. However, they still need to adopt SECURE and SECURE 2.0 amendments. We expect that SECURE and SECURE 2.0 provisions will be packaged in a single amendment document in late 2025; therefore, unless there is an extension, we will provide the amendment to its preapproved plan clients next year well ahead of December 31, 2026.

Any employer that does not use a preapproved document from UBT must contact an attorney to arrange for its plan to be timely amended for these laws. If you have any questions about the upcoming amendment and/or restatement process, please contact your UBT Relationship Manager and we’ll be happy to help.