
Tenechia D. Lockhart
Tenechia D. Lockhart is an associate in the Charlotte, North Carolina, office of Jackson Lewis P.C. Her practice focuses on counseling employers on a broad range of benefit matters, including general compliance and administration of qualified retirement plans under ERISA and the Internal Revenue Code. She also assists clients with welfare plan issues involving cafeteria plans, group health plans, flexible spending accounts, group insurance products, COBRA and HIPAA. Tenechia works directly with plan fiduciaries, frequently attending investment/retirement committee meetings, regarding their duties under ERISA.
In addition, Tenechia advises clients on fiduciary compliance matters relating to plan corrections, prohibited transaction exemptions, and reporting and disclosure obligations. She assists plan sponsors and administrators with investigations, examinations, and audits before the Internal Revenue Service and the United States Department of Labor. She also assists clients in correcting qualified plan defects by filing EPCRS and fiduciary correction program submissions.
Tenechia regularly drafts, amends and reviews plan documents, summary plan descriptions, enrollment materials, and other employee communications.
Exciting Update: Self-Correction for Delinquent Contributions Now Possible Under the DOL’s VFCP
Automatic Enrollment: This Is The Way
Thanks to SECURE Act 2.0, newly established 401(k) and 403(b) plans must now have an automatic enrollment. The SECURE Act 2.0 was passed in December 2022 and made sweeping changes to retirement plan regulations. We discuss many of those changes in our SECURE Act 2.0 blog series.
Plans with an automatic enrollment feature immediately…
Self-Insured Health Plans: Adjusted PCORI Fee Announced for 2024

As discussed in a previous blog, the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) is an independent nonprofit research organization that funds comparative clinical research, among other things. PCORI is funded through annual fees — provided for in the Affordable Care Act — paid by insurers of fully insured health plans and sponsors of self-insured health…
The IRS Starts the Summer with a Splash: New Guidance for Self-Correction
As discussed in an earlier blog post, the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 (the Act) expanded the Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System (EPCRS), a comprehensive IRS program for correcting common qualified retirement plan failures. Plan sponsors have three ways to correct mistakes under EPCRS: the self-correction program (SCP), the voluntary correction program…
SECURE 2.0 Series Part 6: Changes to Retirement Plan Notice Requirements
The SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 (SECURE 2.0) eliminates the requirement for plan sponsors to provide certain notices to eligible but unenrolled employees in defined contribution plans, changes the delivery method plan sponsors must use to furnish benefit statements to participants in retirement plans, and modifies the language required in annual funding notices under defined…