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.

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.

It is intuitive to observe that the easiest way for a plan participant to achieve lifetime participation in the U.S. retirement system is to work for the same employer for 40 years or more. But in today’s highly mobile workforce, that rarely happens. According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI), the average American will change jobs more than seven times during a 40-year working life, indicating that a participant’s average tenure with each employer will be a little over five years. So what can be done to help the vast majority of participants that simply won’t work for one employer for their entire careers? 

It’s ironic that, as we observe another “National Save for Retirement Week,” the retirement system we have in this country isn’t really a “system” at all.

By Neal Ringquist and Tom Hawkins

As we prepare to observe National Save for Retirement Week (also known as “National Retirement Security Week”), scheduled for October 16-22, it’s a great opportunity to remember why we, as individuals, need to save for our retirement. But the sobering reality is that we are all being called upon to save retirement itself—by rescuing a retirement system that doesn’t work for millions of hardworking Americans.

Hey, plan sponsors: Imagine for a moment that your active participants are Tom Cruise from Mission: Impossible (or Barbara Bain, Peter Graves and Martin Landau, for those of us who remember the classic TV series).

Retirement Clearinghouse and the RLJ Companies congratulate the Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement (WISER) on their Twentieth Anniversary Celebration and HERO Awards Reception, taking place September 20^th, 2016 at 101 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, DC.