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. 

Have you ever received a letter with the notice “Time Sensitive Material! Open Immediately!” boldly splashed across the outside of the envelope, only to sigh with disappointment with what’s on the inside?  While the disappointment of false advertising so often seems to be the case with “junk mail,” the warning turns out to be true when we examine the behaviors of retirement plan participants who have recently changed jobs.

With the advent of the Department of Labor's Fiduciary Rule, more employers are looking to promote lifetime plan participation and encourage participants to consolidate retirement assets in their current, active 401(k) plan. The plan feature to enable consolidation in the active 401(k) plan is the roll-in contribution. Retirement Clearinghouse is the recognized thought leader in roll-in facilitation.  We have prepared this video - The ABCs of Roll-Ins -- as a resource for plan sponsors who are considering a formal roll-in program, as well as offering a roll-in facilitation service for their plan participants. 

According to the recently released 2016 Willis Towers Watson U.S. Retirement Governance Survey, a major trend in retirement plan governance is the growing concern employers have for employees’ retirement benefit adequacy and financial well-being. To address this concern, sponsors indicated plans to increase monitoring of participant behaviors, using metrics such as plan participation and contribution rates, as well as carefully tracking the performance of their plans’ investment managers.

In his most recent article in MarketWatch, RCH’s Spencer Williams cites the recent market trauma experienced in the wake of the United Kingdom’s decision to exit the European Union (“Brexit”) as a good reason for retirement-savers to consolidate their accounts.