There’s a Better Way to Handle IRA Beneficiary Distributions
There’s nothing routine about handling an IRA beneficiary claim after an IRA owner passes away. The forms may be standard, but the situation never is. Behind every beneficiary designation is a family sorting through loss, and a financial organization trying to help them navigate an unfamiliar and time-sensitive process.
The reality? IRA beneficiary distributions are complicated. And there’s immense pressure to get everything right.
Deadlines, payout rules, required minimum distributions (RMDs), life expectancy factors, all require decisions that come with a ripple effect. A missed detail can lead to penalties for the beneficiary or reporting issues for your organization. Add in evolving IRS guidance and you’ve got a task that’s far more than administrative.
But what if it didn’t have to be quite so hard?
A More Thoughtful Approach
With the Fully-Administered Program, the weight doesn’t have to fall entirely on your staff. Instead of figuring it out case by case, your team can rely on a clear process with experienced support behind it. Here’s what that looks like.
When an IRA owner dies, our intuitive IRAdirect wizard will walk you step-by-step through the entire process of handling beneficiary distributions in order to ensure that the payouts are appropriate, based on the most recent regulatory guidance.
We verify each beneficiary’s details and confirm if and how the IRA assets need to be split.
We handle the nuances, like calculating single life expectancy payments based on the right life expectancy and payout rules.
IRAdirect eliminates paper forms, offering regulatory compliance logic that catches errors and verifies the accuracy of your IRA tax reporting forms.
We keep track of the latest regulations, so you don’t have to worry about adjusting for each update.
We also have a team of experts, including our ERISA attorneys, who can review escalated beneficiary cases to help determine beneficiary status and options.
The result: beneficiary distributions get done correctly, with consistency and care.
Why It Matters
Beneficiary situations are often emotionally charged. Families are counting on you to be clear and compassionate, and that’s hard to do when you’re knee-deep in technicalities or second-guessing your knowledge on IRA rules.
Partnering with Ascensus to do the heavy work lets your staff focus on people, not paperwork. And it gives your financial organization the assurance that beneficiary accounts are handled in a way that’s not just compliant, but thoughtful.
Ascensus helps take the risk out of administering inherited IRAs. It’s what we do, and we do it well.
Learn more about our Fully-Administered Program here.
