Spencer Williams
As President and CEO, J. Spencer Williams applies more than 25 years of experience in starting, building and leading businesses in the financial services industry. Under his leadership, Retirement Clearinghouse has introduced new industry best practices, been recognized for innovation, improved the operations of thousands of retirement plans, and enhanced the retirement prospects of hundreds of thousands of retirement plan participants.
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Blog
- 401k Cash Outs
- 401k Consolidation
- 401k Plan Termination
- America's Mobile Workforce
- Assisted Roll-in
- Auto Enrollment
- Auto Portability
- Auto Portability Simulation
- Automatic Roll-In
- Automatic Rollover
- Automatic Rollovers
- Boston Research Technologies
- CARES act
- Common Mistakes
- DIY Roll-In
- DOL Advisory Opinion
- EBRI
- Employee Benefit News
- ERISA Advisory Council
- Financial Services Roundtable
- Financial Wellness
- How-To
- In-Plan Consolidation
- Leakage
- Lifetime Plan Participation
- Lost Participants
- Managed Portability
- Mandatory Distributions
- MarketWatch
- Missing Participant IRA
- Missing Participants
- National Retirement Savings Cash Out Clock
- Participant Transition Management
- PLANSPONSOR
- Portability Services Network
- PSCA
- Public Policy
- RCH Services
- Retirement Income
- Retirement Plan Portability
- Retirement Savings Consolidation
- Retirement Savings Portability
- Roll-In
- Safe Harbor IRA
- Saver's Match
- Security
- Small Accounts
- Stale Dated Checks
- Synthetic Tenure
- Uncashed Check Services
- Uncashed Distribution Checks
- Video
- Webcast
- What is a Missing Participant?
Consolidation Corner Blog
Consolidation Corner is the Retirement Clearinghouse (RCH) blog, and features the latest articles and bylines from our executives, addressing important retirement savings portability topics.
Auto Portability is Like Bacon—It Makes Everything Better
When auto enrollment was widely adopted under the Pension Protection Act of 2006, it was a well-intentioned idea for helping Americans save more for retirement.
But in this case, what seemed like the perfect recipe for increasing retirement savings for hardworking Americans was missing a key ingredient.
Department of Labor Issues Auto Portability Advisory Opinion
The Department of Labor (DOL) has issued its 11/06/18 Advisory Opinion 2018-01A on Auto Portability, which can be accessed on the DOL’s website at this link.
Is Your Missing-Participant Program a Ford Model T or 2018 BMW?
A primary responsibility for fiduciaries is to seek out and identify the best available solutions that enable fulfillment of their responsibilities. For plan sponsors tasked with implementing and evaluating the effectiveness of their missing participant program, this can be a difficult task, particularly given the accelerating rate of technological innovation and the virtual explosion of new sources of data available online. In today’s day and age, what is considered a state-of-the-art program today could easily become obsolete tomorrow, rendering a plan’s missing-participant program vulnerable to fiduciary liability.
The Next Big Advancement for the 401(k)
Although the 401(k) is today the primary retirement-savings vehicle for many hardworking Americans, it can be easy to forget that the 401(k) is still a relatively new phenomenon.
Auto Portability’s Role in Helping Women Save More for Retirement
If current trends continue, approximately 104 million women will cash out almost $800 billion in retirement savings, in today’s dollars, over the next generation.
This eye-popping statistic, presented at a “Women and Retirement Income” roundtable discussion on May 22 sponsored by the Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement (WISER), underscores the importance of financial wellness initiatives by plan sponsors to help women participants avoid cash-outs and instead preserve their 401(k) savings in the retirement system.
Encouraging 401(k) Account Consolidation is the Key to Reducing Lost & Missing Participants
Much has been written recently about the preponderance of lost and missing participants. This predicament, one of the many offshoots of the problem of too many small accounts, is an urgent one for sponsors to address given reports that the Department of Labor (DOL) is focusing on their ability to locate missing participants during plan audits.
DC Plan Sponsor Priorities Should Include Plugging Leakage, Enabling Auto Portability
As we continue to make our way through the second quarter of 2018, now is a good time to reflect on defined contribution (DC) plan sponsor priorities for this year.
The top priorities for these plan sponsors in 2018, outlined in December 2017 by Mercer, include:
No Plan is an Island
A New Solution to Tackle the Old Problem of Missing Participants
Despite differences big and small, all retirement plan sponsors and record-keepers experience at least one common problem—the seemingly intractable incidence of participants who have left behind small accounts in the plans sponsored by their former employers and failed to update their address when they subsequently change residence, a.k.a. missing participants.
The Most Urgent New Year’s Resolutions for Plan Sponsors
How are you hoping to improve yourself in 2018?
The most common New Year’s resolutions usually have to do with personal appearance, health, or behavior—losing weight, exercising more, dieting, quitting smoking, etc. Popular polls indicate that many of us are after a slimmer, fitter body for ourselves after each New Year’s Day.
Similarly, defined contribution plan sponsors are likely thinking about how they can make their plans more attractive and streamlined in 2018.
-
Blog
- 401k Cash Outs
- 401k Consolidation
- 401k Plan Termination
- America's Mobile Workforce
- Assisted Roll-in
- Auto Enrollment
- Auto Portability
- Auto Portability Simulation
- Automatic Roll-In
- Automatic Rollover
- Automatic Rollovers
- Boston Research Technologies
- CARES act
- Common Mistakes
- DIY Roll-In
- DOL Advisory Opinion
- EBRI
- Employee Benefit News
- ERISA Advisory Council
- Financial Services Roundtable
- Financial Wellness
- How-To
- In-Plan Consolidation
- Leakage
- Lifetime Plan Participation
- Lost Participants
- Managed Portability
- Mandatory Distributions
- MarketWatch
- Missing Participant IRA
- Missing Participants
- National Retirement Savings Cash Out Clock
- Participant Transition Management
- PLANSPONSOR
- Portability Services Network
- PSCA
- Public Policy
- RCH Services
- Retirement Income
- Retirement Plan Portability
- Retirement Savings Consolidation
- Retirement Savings Portability
- Roll-In
- Safe Harbor IRA
- Saver's Match
- Security
- Small Accounts
- Stale Dated Checks
- Synthetic Tenure
- Uncashed Check Services
- Uncashed Distribution Checks
- Video
- Webcast
- What is a Missing Participant?