If pension plan de-risking is a priority for your company in 2014, you should be aware of a potential pitfall. You may have researched your options and decided on the right program for your company under the assumption that communication channels will be reasonably clear. Yet what you don't know about your past employees may have a substantial and costly impact on your efforts.

The quality of a company's data on retirement plan participants may not seem like a responsibility of the finance department, but the issue presents a very real threat to de-risking strategies such as lump-sum distributions or annuity buyouts.

Even worse, when plan participants have gone “missing,” the company's out-of-date records create uncashed-check liabilities and increase the risk of fraud. As scrutiny by the U.S. Department of Labor grows, corporate finance and treasury teams can no longer ignore the issue of missing participants in their pension and other benefits plans.