The Definitive Guide to 401(k) Cashout Leakage

What is 401(k) Cashout Leakage?

Research Papers:

• Cashing Out: The Systemic Impact of Withdrawing Savings Before Retirement (Savings Preservation Working Group, 2019)
• EBRI Issue Brief #489 (Employee Benefit Research Institute, 2018)
• What do workers do with their retirement savings after they leave their employers? (Alight Solutions, 2019)
• How America Saves (Vanguard, 2021 – directly links to section on plan distributions)
• Eliminating Friction & Leakage in America’s Defined Contribution System (Boston Research Technologies, 2013)
• Actionable Insights for Your Mobile Workforce (Boston Research Technologies, 2015)
• Estimating Leakage from Retirement Savings Accounts (JCX-20-21) (Joint Committee on Taxation, 2021)
• How Employees Handle Their Retirement Savings During Work Transitions (Pew Charitable Trusts, 2021)
• The $10,000 Hurdle (Northern Trust, 2016)
• Plan leakage: A study on the psychology behind leakage of retirement plan assets (DCIIA, 2016)
• Defaulting In and Cashing Out? The Impact of Retirement Plan Design on the Savings Accumulation of Separating Employees (RAND Corporation, 2015)
  

Tools:

• Online Cashout Calculator
• The National Retirement Savings Cash Out Clock

Articles:

• Why 401(k) Cashout Leakage is a Crisis
• 401(k) Cashout Confusion: Who’s Doing It and Why?
• How Big is the 401(k) Cashout Leakage Problem (Really)?
• 3 Promising Policies to Reduce Cashout Leakage
• How to Prevent Retirement Plan Leakage
• The institutionalization of portability is key to reducing cash-out leakage
• A Mistake with Lingering Regret: Cashing Out Your 401(k)
• 401(k) Retirement Savings: More ‘Gone’ Than ‘Forgotten’
• 401(k) Truth Bomb: Missing Participants are Bad, 401(k) Cashouts are Worse

Video:

• The Fundamentals of 401(k) Cashout Leakage
• Five Misconceptions About 401(k) Cashout Leakage

RCH Services that Curb Cashout Leakage:

• RCH Managed Portability
  • Assisted Roll-In (for active participants)
  • Assisted Roll-Out (for terminated participants, all balances)
• RCH Automatic Rollover, featuring RCH Auto Portability

To learn more about all of RCH’s portability and participant search services, call (866) 827-9608, email sales@RCH1.com, or visit our RCH Portability Services page.