Consolidation Corner

Baby boomers will never forget Neil Armstrong’s famous quote in 1969, after becoming the first human being to set foot on the moon:

“That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Today, America faces a different, more down-to-earth challenge: delivering our citizens a comfortable and timely retirement. And similar to the moon landing – a ‘small step’ in the right direction can have a huge impact on the course of our lives.

This video presentation is designed to give the viewer a basic understanding of the Auto Portability Simulation (APS), which models the operation and benefits of Auto Portability.

In consolidated testimony before the ERISA Advisory Council  on the topic of Participant Plan Transfers and Account Consolidation for the Advancement of Lifetime Plan Participation, EBRI’s Craig Copeland and Retirement Clearinghouse’s Tom Johnson presented “Auto Portability Research & Simulation: Automating Plan-to-Plan Transfers for Small Accounts” – providing the Council with the latest information & research on Auto Portability, as well as describing the present state of plan-to-plan transfers (“roll-ins”).

What is Auto Portability? This video presentation is designed to give the viewer a basic understanding of Auto Portability.

This January, LIMRA’s Secure Retirement Institute is promoting their research on Auto Portability, which contains an impressive array of information.

“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting on its shoes” is a quote often attributed to Mark Twain. The same is true of myths about saving for retirement, and retirement services professionals should take it to heart as we begin 2017.

Beginning today, and in the coming weeks ahead, Retirement Clearinghouse will be rolling out our new corporate logo, as part of the ongoing evolution of our retirement savings portability services.

In his latest article in MarketWatch, posted on New Year’s Eve, RCH President, CEO and RetireMentor Spencer Williams counsels those who switched jobs in 2016 to make their New Year’s resolutions to roll-in all of their retirement savings accounts – not just the account in their most recent prior-employer plan – into their new-employer plan.

Under-participation by minorities in America’s 401(k) system represents a significant economic disparity that requires creative, private-sector solutions.

Auto portability – an emerging plan feature that automatically moves small balance accounts forward when participants change jobs – could play a critical role in helping to bridge the participation gap.

For more than a year now, we have been working with the research team at the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), Dr. Ricki Ingalls of Texas State University, and Boston Research Technologies to develop the Auto Portability Simulation (APS). The APS is a robust, quantitatively-based simulation that measures the size, characteristics and behaviors of America’s increasingly mobile workforce. The key findings from that work demonstrate the potential to dramatically reduce retirement plan cash-outs by identifying the long-term, systemic benefits of routine and standardized account consolidation at the time of a participant’s job-change—a technology-based innovation called Auto Portability.