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.

Much has been written in this column and elsewhere about the benefits that auto portability, and seamless plan-to-plan portability in general, can provide to millions of retirement-savers across America. As any entrepreneur can testify, it is challenging to initiate a major innovation, and then persevere through all the twists and turns along the road to widespread adoption. Fortunately for everyday Americans saving for retirement, there is already an established blueprint in place for launching a nationwide, private-sector retirement clearinghouse that will enable auto portability.

Much has been written about the proliferation of small accounts in our nation’s retirement system, and the problems that this explosion has created. A primary solution to the small-account quandary that I have frequently advocated in this column is auto portability.

Two weeks ago, I authored an article applauding the American Benefits Council for their October 2^nd, 2017 letter to the Department of Labor (DOL), which clearly identified the root causes of missing participants: a highly-mobile workforce and a lack of retirement savings portability. Extending the Council’s insight, I maintained that what’s really “missing” in our defined contribution system are initiatives that move retirement savings forward when participants change jobs, such as auto portability. When implemented, these initiatives could serve to dramatically decrease the overall incidence of missing participants.

On October 2^nd, 2017, the American Benefits Council delivered a letter to the Department of Labor (DoL), urging the DoL to act on the problem of unresponsive or missing participants, an issue that has proven to be a significant point-of-pain for plan sponsors.

The recent hacking of Equifax, which potentially compromised the security of sensitive information for 143 million Americans, doesn’t just reinforce the importance of cybersecurity. This cyberattack also makes a compelling case for the widespread adoption of auto portability.

It’s generally accepted that the small-balance accounts of terminated 401(k) plan participants have been a problem for plan sponsors, resulting in increased plan costs, fiduciary risk and other ancillary problems, such as missing participants and uncashed distribution checks.

Now, based on new information from EBRI and other sources, we’re learning that small accounts are a large and growing problem for active participants as well.

Without seamless plan-to-plan portability in place to preserve retirement savings when a participant changes jobs, many employers are unwittingly paying “exit bonuses” to terminated employees that they may never have intended to pay.

If you’re like most homeowners during these dog days of summer, you’re not just basking in the sunshine or swimming in the pool with your family. You also have a fight on your hands—the war against the dandelions that invade and attempt to occupy your entire lawn every year at this time.

If you think of retirement savings as a key part of a healthy retirement, then anyone who has prematurely cashed out 401(k) savings during their working life has suffered a compound fracture that will require several stages of therapy to fully rehabilitate. But a cash-out isn’t the only impediment to a financially secure retirement for these hardworking Americans.