The 401(k) cashout leakage problem is once again in the news, with the publication of an alarming study by academics, as well as new data from Fidelity Investments revealing a cashout leakage ‘danger zone’ facing participants between the ages of 30-39.

These studies, combined with the mounting weight of empirical evidence gathering for more than a decade, confirm that 401(k) cashout leakage is a huge, persistent problem.

For defined contribution recordkeepers, competition has long been fierce, so it’s extraordinary when industry rivals join forces and align around a common cause.

That alignment around auto portability, embodied in the newly launched Portability Services Network (PSN), was on full display in a 12/8/22 Groom Law Group webinar. The event featured representatives from retirement industry titans and founding PSN members Alight Solutions, Fidelity Investments and the Vanguard Group, joined by Retirement Clearinghouse (RCH).

In the retirement community, momentum is growing to make our 401(k) system more inclusive and to ensure that retirement savings are more equitable.

I'm a big fan of 401(k) plan consultants, who’ve been forceful advocates for the adoption of best practices at leading retirement plan sponsors. So, it’s surprising to me that, when it comes to automatic rollover programs, consultants sometimes miss the mark, at least in terms of participant outcomes.

August 14^th is National Financial Awareness Day, and 401(k) plan sponsors have been instrumental in increasing the financial awareness of millions of Americans by providing them with access to workplace retirement savings plans that materially enhance their prospects for a timely and comfortable retirement.

Winston Churchill, once referring to the intentions of the former Soviet Union, stated: “it is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” For 401(k) plan sponsors, that’s an apt description for the problem of missing participants.

Vanguard’s How America Saves report for 2022 provided cause for optimism with some of its findings. For example, employee participation rates in Vanguard-managed defined contribution plans remain high, and have not declined year-over-year during the pandemic. The majority of participants in Vanguard plans also increased or maintained their contributions last year, and the average account balance for Vanguard participants increased by 10% year-over-year, to $141,542.

Selecting an automatic rollover IRA provider used to be easy.

Most 401(k) plan sponsors simply accepted the solution offered through their recordkeeper or TPA. Others performed due diligence, using a limited set of criteria including basic fees, investment options and accountholder service.

Over the past 15 years, a very large (250,000+ participants) 401(k) plan sponsor that our company has had the opportunity to serve has been highly successful in delivering improved participant outcomes by incrementally adopting a full program of retirement savings portability.

Were the plan’s experience set to music, it could be described as “401(k) Portability in Four Movements” – opening with discordant levels of cashout leakage but quickly building towards more satisfying participant outcomes, including substantial improvements in the preservation and consolidation of retirement savings.

An interesting and valuable finding lies buried within EBRI’s 2022 Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS), but you won’t find it referenced in the organization’s initial report, officially released to the public on Thursday, April 28^th.

In an excerpt of a report available to survey partners, the RCS found that a plurality of job-changing 401(k) plan participants favored automatic plan-to-plan portability over consolidating their savings to an IRA, or leaving their savings behind in their former employer’s plan. This result comes on the heels of EBRI’s 2021 survey, which found that nearly 9 in 10 participants believed that auto portability would be valuable to them.