Consolidation Corner
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Blog
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- Synthetic Tenure
- Uncashed Check Services
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- What is a Missing Participant?
Leakage
Consolidation Corner Blog
Consolidation Corner is the Retirement Clearinghouse (RCH) blog, and features the latest articles and bylines from our executives, addressing important retirement savings portability topics.
Key Portability Finding Located in EBRI's Retirement Confidence Survey
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 28th.
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.
The ‘Great Resignation’ Screams for Improved Retirement-Savings Portability
COVID-19 has altered so much in our nation, and our world, over the past two years. Many of us learned to stop and smell the roses during lockdowns, and count our blessings, especially health and family. For those who were fortunate enough to remain employed full-time during the pandemic and could work remotely, videoconferencing tools like Zoom and Microsoft Teams suddenly became indispensable for conferring with colleagues and customers.
Kennedy Townsend: Solving Portability and Cashout Leakage are a Key DOL Priority
On 12/6/21, the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) conducted day 1 of their two-day 90th Annual Public Policy Forum. This forum’s theme was “A Path to a More Equitable Solution: Solving the Retirement Coverage Gap” and it seems to have been highly popular, as it broke EBRI’s previous record for forum attendance.
Senate Hearing Reveals Large Employer Support for Auto Portability
During testimony in a July 28th hearing held by the Senate Finance Committee (Building on Bipartisan Retirement Legislation: How Can Congress Help?), Aliya Robinson, Senior Vice President of Retirement and Compensation Policy for the ERISA Advisory Committee (ERIC), twice voiced her support for auto portability, the new plan feature that automatically moves small balances to the new employer’s plan when participants change jobs.
A Big Problem: Another Leakage Study Reaches the Same Conclusion
Arriving with little fanfare, a recent study prepared by the Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, a nonpartisan committee of the United States Congress, confirms the findings of earlier research on cashout leakage – namely, that cashout leakage is a big problem, is driven by job changing, and is exacerbated by "forced distributions and [a lack of] portability of plans.”
Automated 401(k) Portability: An Idea Whose Time Has Come
French author and poet Victor Hugo observed: “nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”
In theory at least, plan-to-plan portability has always been a feature of our 401(k) system. In practice, it’s been completely impractical for all but a hardy few. The idea of automating 401(k) portability was the holy grail, a ‘moonshot’ generally believed to be impossible…until now.
401(k) Plan Terminations Could Produce New Wave of Cashout Leakage
During the COVID-19 crisis, massive job losses combined with economic hardship and relaxed restrictions on withdrawals have created the conditions for a perfect storm of 401(k) cashout leakage. Unfortunately, this storm may soon gain more strength, when a surge in end-of-year 401(k) plan terminations could trigger a new flood of cashouts, as participants are forced to leave their former employers’ plans.
The New Age of DC Plan Portability

Safe-Harbor IRAs are Supposed to be Temporary
The Auto Portability Imperative

-
Blog
- 401k Cash Outs
- 401k Consolidation
- 401k Plan Termination
- America's Mobile Workforce
- Assisted Roll-in
- Auto Enrollment
- Auto Portability
- Auto Portability Simulation
- Automatic Roll-In
- Automatic Rollover
- Automatic Rollovers
- Boston Research Technologies
- CARES act
- Common Mistakes
- DIY Roll-In
- DOL Advisory Opinion
- EBRI
- Employee Benefit News
- ERISA Advisory Council
- Financial Services Roundtable
- Financial Wellness
- How-To
- In-Plan Consolidation
- Leakage
- Lifetime Plan Participation
- Lost Participants
- Managed Portability
- Mandatory Distributions
- MarketWatch
- Missing Participant IRA
- Missing Participants
- National Retirement Savings Cash Out Clock
- Participant Transition Management
- PLANSPONSOR
- PSCA
- Public Policy
- RCH Services
- Retirement Income
- Retirement Plan Portability
- Retirement Savings Consolidation
- Retirement Savings Portability
- Roll-In
- Safe Harbor IRA
- Security
- Small Accounts
- Stale Dated Checks
- Synthetic Tenure
- Uncashed Check Services
- Uncashed Distribution Checks
- Video
- Webcast
- What is a Missing Participant?