African Methodist Episcopal Church Failed to Properly Manage Retirement Fund, Class Action Alleges

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The African Methodist Episcopal Church (AMEC) faces a proposed class action over its alleged mishandling of an employee pension fund.

The 20-page lawsuit alleges defendants AMEC; Newport Group, Inc.; Symetra Financial Corporation; AMEC Financial Services, Inc., who does business as AMEC Department of Retirement Services; and Reverend Dr. Jerome V. Harris, its former executive director, have mismanaged the fund such that tens of millions of dollars in pension savings have been lost.

According to the case, the defendants’ conduct has caused AMEC ministers to experience “heartbreaking and devastating stress and hardship” due to the loss of their retirement funds after spending “countless hours in service to AMEC’s church members.”

“Defendants’ shocking wrongdoing and mismanagement has caused untold financial, mental, and physical hardship,” the complaint scathes.

Per the lawsuit, the African Methodist Episcopal denomination grew out of the Free African Society, a group established in Philadelphia in 1787, and had roughly 2.5 million members by 2011. According to the case, AMEC ministers are required to contribute a portion of their salary into the Department of Retirement Services fund, which the defendants represented would be invested in “very conservative investments that would ensure preservation of principal.”

The lawsuit says the pension fund grew to a value of roughly $125 million under the leadership of Dr. Harris, who retired from his executive director position in July 2021. After another individual took over Dr. Harris’s position, however, it was discovered that the fund was missing a substantial amount of money, according to the complaint.

Per the suit, the AMEC stated in an October 2021 Facebook post that the fund “has reported a material loss in the value of one or more of its departmental investments” and was being audited by an independent law firm and accounting firm.

Although the AMEC has not stated how much money is missing from the fund, the church discussed in a mid-January meeting the possibility of borrowing $45 million or selling church property to restore “at least some of the missing money,” the case relays. The plaintiff, an AMEC minister who served the church from 1997 until his retirement in September 2021, and other AMEC members believe the fund’s losses are even more devasting and could exceed 60 percent of the fund.

The plaintiff says he received a letter dated September 14, 2021 in which he was notified that disbursements would be “temporarily paused” while the fund was being audited. Though the plaintiff mailed a written request to release his funds in late September, his request was denied, the suit relays. According to the case, retired AMEC ministers and employees like the plaintiff, who is over 70 years old and had planned to rely on the retirement funds he had saved over more than two decades, have been wrongfully deprived of access to their money.

The lawsuit looks to represent anyone in the U.S. who is or was a minister or other employee of the AMEC and who has contributions in the church’s retirement fund and/or is due disbursements that the fund has failed to pay from January 1, 2021 through the present.

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