If you're a Colorado employer, 2026 just became the year where "flying under the radar" officially died.
While most business owners were busy dealing with the usual January chaos, tax prep, budget planning, and those New Year's resolutions to finally organize the filing cabinet, the Colorado Department of Treasury quietly pulled off something that should make every employer in the state sit up and pay attention.
They connected the dots. Literally.
Buried in the December 2025 Colorado SecureSavings Board materials was a single line that changes everything:
"New Employer Data: Paid Family Leave Data - executed data sharing agreement."
Translation? The folks running Colorado SecureSavings (the state-mandated retirement program) and the FAMLI (Family and Medical Leave Insurance) program are now playing on the same team. They're sharing data. Your data.
And per the Board notes, this isn’t just a “nice-to-have link.” It’s the state’s way of ending what we’ll politely call the Data Quality Loophole: the reality that old employer lists were messy, outdated, and full of wrong contacts.
In fact, the state admitted to “limited employer engagement” in the first 2025 wave (about 16,000 employers) specifically because of data quality issues. In plain English: they tried to reach employers using old lists… and a lot of those lists were not exactly winning “most accurate spreadsheet of the year.”
Here’s what “we cleaned up the list” looks like when you translate it into actual numbers from the December 2, 2025 Board Meeting:
Want the receipts / a peek behind the curtain? Here are the December 2025 Board Materials so you can see the enforcement strategy and data clean-up plan in the state’s own words:
December 2025 Colorado SecureSavings Board Materials (source)
One more “insider” stat that’s easy to miss: as of late 2025, over 41,000 employers have already filed for exemptions (which usually means they already offer their own plan), while only about 17,500 employers are actually registered for the state program. Translation: the state knows a lot of employers are handling this with their own plan… and they also know there’s a big group that still needs to be chased down.
If you're registered with FAMLI, and unless you went through the nightmare of opting out, you probably are, the state now has a direct pipeline to your:
More importantly (and this is straight out of the Board’s direction of travel), that FAMLI feed is being used to clean out bad records and update employer contact information with newer, better data. So if your plan was “they probably have the wrong email for us”… congrats, that plan is getting deleted and replaced with your current info.
And if you're not registered with Colorado SecureSavings? That red flag just got a whole lot brighter.
For those who've managed to avoid this particular bureaucratic maze, FAMLI is Colorado's paid family and medical leave insurance program. It launched in 2023, and by 2024, nearly every Colorado employer with at least one employee was automatically enrolled unless they jumped through hoops to opt out.
The program requires employers to:
And here's the kicker: the same state agency managing FAMLI is now the enforcement arm for Colorado SecureSavings compliance.
Let's connect the dots here.
Colorado SecureSavings requires businesses with 5 or more employees that have been in operation for at least two years to either:
Before this data sharing agreement, enforcement was… let's say "theoretical." Businesses could register (or not), and the state didn't have a great way to cross-reference who was actually in scope.
Not anymore.
Now, if your business is in the FAMLI system, which it almost certainly is, the Colorado Department of Treasury already knows:
The enforcement mechanism isn't coming. It's here. And it's automated.
Here's where theory meets reality, and it's not pretty.
Let's talk about what it actually takes to navigate these state-run systems. Take FAMLI, for example. One Colorado business owner applied to opt out in December 2024. The application was finally approved in February 2026, over a year later.
In that time:
And that's just for FAMLI. Now imagine dealing with two interconnected state programs, each with its own portal, its own deadlines, and its own bureaucratic black hole of customer service.
The math is simple: every hour you spend navigating state portals is an hour you're not running your business. And if you get it wrong? The penalties stack up fast.
Colorado SecureSavings isn't playing around when it comes to enforcement. While the state has been relatively quiet about publicizing the specific penalty structure: some might say they've "washed" the internet of those details: the reality for non-compliant employers is clear:
$100 per eligible employee, per year.
For a business with 10 employees, that's potentially $1,000 annually in fines. For a business with 50 employees? $5,000. And that's assuming first-time non-compliance. Repeat offenders face even steeper consequences.
But here's what keeps business owners up at night: it's not just the fine itself. It's the cascade of administrative nightmares that follow:
And with the FAMLI data-sharing agreement in place, the state doesn't need to manually hunt for non-compliant businesses. The system flags them automatically.
2025 was the "grace period" year: when the state sent warning letters and educational materials. Employers could register late without major consequences.
But 2025 also came with a quiet asterisk: the state’s own Board materials point out limited employer engagement in the first 2025 annual wave (around 16,000 employers) because their outreach lists had data quality problems. That was the loophole. Not a legal loophole—an “our list is a mess” loophole.
Now they’re closing it.
2026 is the enforcement year.
The Colorado Department of Treasury has spent the last two years building out its infrastructure, hiring auditors, and: as we now know: connecting data systems. They have the tools. They have the information. And they have the mandate to start collecting.
And here’s the part that should make you update your compliance plan today, not “sometime this quarter”: the Board notes also reference a “Second Annual Wave”—and this is exactly how they catch the employers who slipped through the first time.
Per the December 2, 2025 notes, that Second Annual Wave targeted 6,300 new employers with a November 15th deadline. In other words: once the list got cleaned (and contact info got upgraded), the state ran another pass to scoop up anyone who wasn’t reached—or wasn’t reachable—during Wave 1.
So if you slipped past the first round because your contact info was stale, the Second Wave is basically the state saying: “No worries—we brought a better list… and a deadline.”
The "I didn't know" defense? It stopped working on January 1, 2026.
Here's the good news: you don't have to choose between paying state fines and drowning in administrative paperwork.
A qualified 401(k) plan: specifically, a Pooled Employer Plan (PEP) like Castle Rock PEP: satisfies the Colorado SecureSavings requirement entirely. You register once with the state to confirm you have a plan, and you're done. No facilitation of the state program. No ongoing state portal navigation. No automated enforcement flags.
Even better? The administrative burden shifts entirely off your plate:
What Castle Rock PEP Handles:
What You Handle:
And unlike the state's auto-IRA program, a 401(k) through a PEP offers:
No 14-month approval processes. No mysterious credit balances. Just a straightforward, compliant solution that actually benefits your team.
Colorado employers are standing at a crossroads in 2026. You can:
The third option is the only one that turns a state mandate into a business advantage.
If you're reading this and realizing you haven't registered for Colorado SecureSavings: or worse, you're registered for FAMLI but not offering any retirement benefit: the clock is already ticking.
The state won't send you a courtesy reminder before the fines start. The data sharing agreement means they already know who you are and whether you're compliant.
Your next steps:
The Colorado compliance landscape just got a whole lot more real. With the FAMLI data-sharing agreement in place, the state has turned enforcement from a manual process into an automated one. They have your data. They have the penalties ready. And they have no reason not to use both.
You can spend the next year fighting state portals and hoping for the best, or you can solve the problem once with a solution that actually benefits your team.
Castle Rock PEP: Simplifying retirement for all. One plan. Every business.
Ready to skip the state bureaucracy and protect your business? Start today or schedule a PEP Talk to learn how we make Colorado compliance the easy part.