Fiduciary Liability (ERISA)

Fiduciary liability covers people who administer employee benefit plans against claims that they breached their duties under ERISA. It is distinct from directors and officers coverage, which addresses governance of the organization, and from the fidelity bond ERISA separately requires, which protects plan assets against dishonesty.

Senior care operators are labor-intensive employers running retirement and health plans across a large, often high-turnover workforce, which puts the usual fiduciary exposures in play: plan fee reasonableness, investment selection, and the administrative errors that come with rapid onboarding and offboarding. ERISA imposes personal liability on the individuals who serve as fiduciaries, and those individuals are frequently your own executives serving on a plan committee without having been told that is what they are. Two practical checks: confirm the fiduciary policy is separate from D&O rather than a shared sublimit, and confirm the ERISA fidelity bond requirement is separately satisfied, because the bond and the liability policy do different jobs and one does not substitute for the other.