News

Trump administration touts $1,000 'Trump Accounts' at summit

USA Today personal finance reporter Daniel de Visé, covering the Trump Accounts Summit on Jan. 28 in Washington, DC that touts the federal program that will deposit $1,000 into savings accounts for every child born between 2025 and 2028, deposited into an IRA. De Visé turns to multiple industry experts, including RCH's Spencer Williams and Neal Ringquist. Williams offered his view that the "best-case scenario on that thousand dollars, it would be sitting in that IRA, compounding, until I retired,” while Ringquist characterized Trump Accounts as "an 18-year head start to retirement."

Also featured in MSN.com, Yahoo! Finance, and AOL

Defined Contribution Top Trends for 2026: What Plan Sponsors Need to Get Right

In their forward-looking article noting the key issues that plan sponsors need to "get right" for 2026, TheAdviserMagazine outlines the top trends for the year. Focusing on regulatory and compliance issues, the authors write: "plan sponsors should be aware of two key initiatives: automatic portability and the Retirement Savings Lost and Found Database. Both are designed to help participants maintain or reclaim retirement savings as they transition between jobs throughout their career."

Andy Reed: Inertia Is the Most Powerful Force in Behavioral Finance

Andy Reed, Vanguard’s head of behavioral economics research, is the featured guest on Morningstar's "The Long View" podcast, and offers his hosts his expert views on how investors think, feel, and make decisions. During the discussion, the conversation turns to the topic of cashout leakage, where Reed states: "I think auto-portability is a really compelling solution to this problem.....being able to move your pockets of money from one plan to another can be really powerful in kind of maintaining that saving and investing momentum."

Generation Beta: first Americans to save for retirement at birth

Writing in Employee Benefit News, RCH President & CEO Spencer Williams examines the phenomenon of Generation Beta, the first Americans "who will start saving for their retirement when they are born" - by virtue of their qualifying to receive federally-funded Trump Accounts. Williams further observes that "[w]hen recipients of Trump Accounts turn 18, those accounts are eligible to be rolled in to their employer’s 401(k) plan" and sees opportunities for "digital, paperless account portability" to facilitate the consolidation of these balances and allowing for their ongoing growth.

401(k) Real Talk Episode 179: January 7, 2026

In his recurring 401(k) Real Talk video series, Fred Barstein, Founder & CEO of The Retirement Adviser University (TRAU), covers the major 401(k) topics of interest to plan advisors. In this episode, Barstein identifies for his viewership the top five news items "worth reading/listening/noting" and, at the top of Barstein's list is the December 16, 2025 announcement from Retirement Clearinghouse (RCH) that the firm had surpassed $20B in total account consolidations.

2025: A Breakthrough Year for Portability

Writing in 401k Specialist, RCH’s Tom Hawkins looks back on 2025, when three important developments emerged related to the topic of retirement savings portability. Taken together, Hawkins asserts that these developments represent a “breakthrough year for portability” and that “the pattern from 2025 is clear: retirement savings portability—especially for small-balance accounts—is becoming a more central element of plan design discussions."

Millions Could Close the Retirement Gap with One Small Change

Writing in Money, lead data journalist Adam Hardy examines the beneficial impact of automatic features for 401(k) plans and their participants. Hardy draws heavily on the results of a March 2025 EBRI Issue Brief which detailed the benefits of 3 "automatic" features, including auto enrollment, auto escalation and auto portability, and quotes EBRI's director of wealth benefits research Craig Copeland. Hardy includes the study's key auto portability-related result, which found that "when automatic portability alone is used by all plans, the reduction in the retirement savings shortfall reaches over 11 percent for those ages 35–39."

401(k) Plan-to-Plan Rollovers Hit $20B: Retirement Clearinghouse

Ignites' Beagan Wilcox-Volz covers the 12/16/25 announcement by Retirement Clearinghouse (RCH) that it has "moved $20 billion in assets from old accounts held through former employers' plans into new, active accounts or IRAs since 2009, when [the firm] was founded." Importantly, the article notes that "[t]he $20 billion milestone includes small 401(k) accounts moved by the Portability Services Network, an industry 'utility' established by Retirement Clearinghouse and six recordkeepers, which are founding owner members of the network — Alight, Fidelity, Empower, Principal, Vanguard and TIAA."

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