Consolidation Corner

In the world of retirement savings, auto portability has emerged as a transformative solution designed to address the persistent problem of cashout leakage – when employees cash out their retirement savings upon changing jobs, rather than moving their savings forward into their new employer-sponsored plan.

Auto portability will deliver broad-based benefits to America’s workforce, but research has shown that the new feature disproportionately benefits under-saved and underserved demographic segments, including minorities, women, lower-income and younger workers.

CHARLOTTE, NC—December 3, 2024—Portability Services Network (PSN) announces that, in its first year of operation, more than 15,000 plans representing approximately 5 million participants have signed up for auto portability. Robert L. Johnson, Chairman of the Portability Services Network and Retirement Clearinghouse, said, “I heartily applaud the six recordkeepers that launched Portability Services Network for their unwavering commitment to improving the retirement welfare of America’s under-saved and under-served workers. Auto portability was conceived as an innovation to benefit minority and women savers, and it is immensely gratifying to witness its coming to fruition through the hard work of Alight, Vanguard, Fidelity Investments, Empower, TIAA, and Principal® to make auto portability a reality. We encourage more plan sponsors and recordkeepers to join and do their part to assist low-income workers in achieving a financially secure retirement."

Recently, we’ve read – mainly via paid promotions – about the existence of so-called “world-class” automatic rollover IRA services, which seem to be little more than old-school, traditional automatic rollover IRAs laying claim to unspecified, premium features.

On September 2, 1974, President Gerald Ford signed the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) into law. Since that time, ERISA has become the regulatory backbone of the retirement services industry. And on September 12, members of the industry, along with legislators, government regulators, and other private and public sector representatives, came together to celebrate ERISA’s golden anniversary in Washington, D.C. My colleagues and I were honored to be among those in attendance.

With the release of Vanguard’s September 2024 study (Job transitions slow retirement savings), we can consider adding a new term – shrinkage – to the lexicon of retirement savings ills associated with America’s mobile workforce, taking its spot alongside its sibling, cashout leakage.

When it comes to locating missing plan participants, electronic searches or “e-searches” are an indispensable tool. While it’s been proven that e-searches can be highly effective, inevitably situations will arise where plan sponsors must do something more, and that typically involves performing a more intensive search, where additional search resources are applied to improve the quality of the search, over and above what an e-Search can deliver.

In July, an article noted that the adoption of auto portability was picking up steam with thousands of plan sponsors already signing up for the service, delivered by the Portability Service Network (PSN). As I write this around six weeks later, that figure continues to rise at a brisk pace.

As PSN operations have commenced, and as the automated plan-to-plan consolidation of small balances begins, a familiar industry adoption pattern is emerging – where innovators within the plan sponsor community lead the charge and are quickly followed by others.

For plan sponsors who are still considering adopting auto portability, here are four compelling reasons why you should move now to embrace the new plan feature.

Retirement Clearinghouse (RCH) has launched two new Saver’s Match resources, which offer plan sponsors, plan providers and participants with consolidated information about the Saver’s Match program, as well as a new saver-focused tool – the Saver’s Match Estimator – which will calculate an estimated matching contribution under the program.

New retirement innovations, however compelling they may be, face their biggest challenge in surmounting the glacial pace of change that prevails in the retirement industry, where nothing comes easy.