Notice to Participants in the Hotel Trades Council and Hotel Association of NYC, Inc. Pension Fund

Dear Pension Fund Participant:

You recently received a Notice to Interested Parties—called a Form 3500 filing, informing you that our pension fund will undergo an audit by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). We wish to assure you that this is a routine notice that is legally required to be sent out every few years.

The audit the letter talks about is also routine. It is part of a process by the government to protect pension plans and to protect pension fund participants like yourselves. It is a good process because pension plans and their participants should be protected. But in no way is the letter you received or the upcoming audit itself an indication that our pension fund is in jeopardy. On the contrary, our pension fund welcomes this audit because it will show that it is enjoying its healthiest and most financially secure status in the last 20 years.

We certainly understand that legally required notices like the Notice to Interested Parties that many of you recently received can be unnecessarily troubling. But as we informed you last year, as of January 1, 2013—more than two years ago—our Pension Fund was less than eight percentage points away from being in the green status of 80 percent or more, meaning it is in far better standing than most pension funds in the U.S. While no one can guarantee the future performance of our Pension Fund’s investments and no one can predict other factors like additional increases in average life expectancy, there is one guarantee we can always make to you: the Pension Plan Trustees will constantly and carefully monitor its funded status for the purpose of protecting the benefits you earn. You can be further assured that the Trustees remain confident that the upcoming routine IRS audit will contain no bad news and that the Pension Plan will continue to provide its participants and their families with retirement benefits that are secure and sufficiently funded under the law.              

—Peter Ward