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Michael Kreps on 2025's Quiet Retirement Revolution: Trump Accounts, Saver’s Match, and More

Massena Associates conducts a wide-ranging interview with ERISA expert and industry thought leader Michael Kreps of the Groom Law Group, who offers his views on the current state and future direction of retirement savings. Kreps discusses the importance of recent public policy initiatives -- Trump Accounts, the Saver's Match and Auto Portability -- and their potential to fuel increased retirement wealth. With respect to Trump Accounts and the Saver's Match, Kreps states: “if we could build a clearinghouse-type structure to facilitate these two programs, we’d have the ability to use that infrastructure to do lots of stuff—facilitating portability, finding missing participants, reuniting people with their accounts. There’s all kinds of cool stuff we could do.”

Auto Portability | Helping Reduce 401(k) Leakage After Job Changes

Writing in their Insights blog, the Retirement Plan Advisory Group (RPAG) provides their plan advisor audience with an overview of auto portability. The piece nicely summarizes the problem of a mobile workforce and cashout leakage, and presents auto portability -- as delivered by the consortium of recordkeepers who formed the Portability Services Network -- as a solution to the problem, delivering "an extra $1.6 trillion in retirement savings over the next generation."

Top earners are saving more for retirement. Everyone else is saving less.

Writing in USA Today, personal finance reporter Daniel de Visé examines new retirement research from Dayforce with troubling findings, suggesting that "many American workers [are] losing ground on retirement savings between 2021 and 2024" while "top earners" have gained the most. De Visé turns to Matt Bahl, vice president and head of workplace solutions at the nonprofit Financial Health Network, who suggests that employers take advantage of several strategies, including "auto-portability, a mechanism that automatically transfers a retirement plan to a new employer when someone changes jobs."

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Millions lose out as job changes trigger involuntary 401(k) rollovers

Seeking Alpha's Rob Williams reports on the problems encountered by small-balance, job-changing participants who are involuntarily forced-out of their former employer's 401(k) plan and into safe harbor IRAs. Drawing upon the 11/15/25 article on the same topic by Anne Tergesen in the Wall Street Journal, Williams refers to comments by RCH & PSN CEO Spencer Williams, who leads the effort dedicated to reforming the longstanding practice through auto portability, which automatically moves these small-balance retirement balances forward.

Also featured in MSN Money

Forgotten 401(k) Accounts Are Costing Americans Billions in Lost Investment Gains

The Wall Street Journal's Anne Tergesen takes on the topic of left-behind 401(k) savings and the participant outcomes that occur when small-balance accounts are forced out in safe harbor IRAs, where they can languish in an environment characterized by high fees and sub-optimal investments. Tergesen turns to RCH and Portability Services Network (PSN) CEO Spencer Williams, along with Fiona Grieg of Vanguard (an owner-member of PSN), who provide their views on the problem, while Tergesen goes on to describe auto portability's emerging role in moving these balances forward within the 401(k) system.

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‘Forgotten’ Accounts: Forget Hyperbole, Here’s a Solution

In the wake of media hyperbole surrounding the issue of so-called 'forgotten' 401(k) accounts, RCH’s Tom Hawkins, writing in 401k Specialist, evaluates three potential solutions to enable broad portability, zeroing in on an “affirmative consent-based automatic transfer process, applying to all balances not covered by auto portability and supporting IRA rollovers, plan-to-plan roll-ins, as well as those who choose to stay in-plan.”

Universal Automatic Portability: A Close Look

Writing in ASPPA Net, American Retirement Association's Paul Mulholland identifies the absence of universal auto portability as one of the "primary obstacles to consistent retirement saving" and "is especially obnoxious because it undermines the security of those who have access to a plan and are actually saving." Mulholland chronicles the woes of safe harbor IRAs, when used as final resting places for participants' forced-out balances, and turns to RCH's Neal Ringquist and Groom Law Group's Michael Kreps for their views on the Portability Services Network and auto portability.

Episode 81: Portability Services Network Update with Neal Ringquist

In episode 81 of CAPTRUST's Revamping Retirement podcast, hosts Audrey Wheat and Peter Ruffel welcome back Neal Ringquist, EVP & Chief Revenue Officer of Retirement Clearinghouse, for a deep dive into auto portability and the Portability Services Network (PSN). Neal explains how auto portability enables seamless retirement balance transfers between employers, backed by regulatory support and a consortium of major recordkeepers. The conversation highlights key adoption metrics—over 21,000 plan sponsors enrolled and 16,700 completed transactions—and explores future applications like the Saver’s Match. The episode also clears up common misconceptions and encourages plan sponsors to engage in expanding PSN’s impact.