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Retirement Clearinghouse in the News

Find news articles referencing RCH and our services, including Auto Portability

Jan
19
2022

National Urban League, NAACP Endorse 401k Auto Portability

Robert L. Johnson, Founder and Chairman of The RLJ Companies and majority owner of Retirement Clearinghouse (RCH), has secured endorsements for auto portability from two premier civil rights organizations – the National Urban League, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) – both with over a century of experience advocating for solutions that address the inequities and economic challenges experienced by Black Americans and by other communities of color. Writing in 401k Specialist, RCH's Renée Wilder Guerin, Executive Vice President, Public Policy, summarizes these major developments.

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Jan
11
2022

You have more access to your 401(k) than you think — and that’s not always a good thing

Alicia Munnell, director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College and writing in MarketWatch, examines the phenomenon of 401(k) leakage, and considers the balancing act between preserving savings for retirement, vs. allowing access to savings for participants who need their money. Munnell identifies the "really annoying and large source of leakage is people cashing out when they change jobs" and, in an ideal world, would prefer to "prohibit cashing out at job changes entirely." More practically, Munnell suggests that RCH's auto portability program, "a platform for automatically transferring balances under $5,000 from an old plan to a new plan" could coexist with "a system with standardized forms and procedures for balances of all sizes."

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Jan
10
2022

4 Reasons Why 401k Auto Portability is Inevitable

Writing in 401k Specialist, RCH's Tom Hawkins offers an optimistic assessment of the prospects for auto portability. Hawkins, a self-confessed "long-time, unabashed proponent" of auto portability, has recently concluded that the feature's eventual, widespread adoption is "inevitable" and supports his position with four key points.

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Jan
06
2022

The Aspen Leadership Forum on Retirement Savings

In a publication released 1/6/2022 as part of the Aspen Institute's Financial Security Program, the 2021 Aspen Leadership Forum on Retirement Savings Report is a summary of the April 2021 Aspen Leadership Forum on Retirement Savings. The Forum's report devotes a page to "Six Stats That Tell the Portability Story" which notes the propensity of American workers to change jobs and to cash out. It also mentions two compelling statistics: 1) that 85% of participants like the idea of automatic portability and 2) that 57% of retirement experts supported a government mandate for auto portability, while almost half (48%) believed that automatic portability was feasible without such a mandate.

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Jan
06
2022

The retirement crisis: where do we stand?

Robert Powell, writing in MarketWatch, takes stock of the retirement crisis and turns to Tony Webb, formerly a senior research economist at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, and now an affiliated researcher with the Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis at The New School. Webb recounts a meeting years ago with RCH's Spencer Williams and Tom Johnson during the formative stages of auto portability. Recalling that meeting, Webb notes that Williams and Johnson “had an idea for automating the transfer of 401(k) plan balances from one plan to another” and described the pair as “the men in white hats, trying to do good.”

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Jan
05
2022

EBRI's Lori Lucas Featured in Retirement Management Journal

EBRI's CEO Lori Lucas is featured in the current issue of Retirement Management Journal in an article entitled: “The Visionaries Series – Lori Lucas, CFA – The Economic Importance of Employee Benefits for Americans Financial Security.” In the wide-ranging piece, Lucas is interviewed by RMJ editor-in-chief Robert Powell, along with Stacy Schaus, founder & CEO of Schaus Group LLC. Lucas explains EBRI's efforts to bring clarity to the problem of cashout leakage, as well as their ongoing efforts to analyze the impact of auto portability on preserving Americans' retirement savings.

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Jan
05
2022

What the Pension Protection Act has taught us about saving for retirement

Writing in Employee Benefit News, RCH President & CEO Spencer Williams marks the 15th anniversary of the Pension Protection Act (PPA) and offers his views on the unintended consequences of that legislation. Acknowledging that the automatic enrollment feature has been successful in increasing plan participation, Williams notes that the feature also resulted in a “sharp uptick in small, stranded 401(k) savings accounts” that – absent easy plan-to-plan asset portability – has led to increased participant fees as well as higher levels of cash outs. In response, Williams observes that “the private and public sectors have worked together to create solutions” such as auto portability, which can help rectify the PPA’s flaws, and allow Americans to save more for retirement.

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Dec
16
2021

Solving 401k Portability and Cashout Leakage a Key DOL Priority

On 12/6/21, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Special Assistant to the Secretary of Labor for Retirement, served as the keynote speaker at EBRI's 90th Public Policy Forum, and outlined the big-picture, retirement-focused priorities of the DOL. One of the DOL's three priorities is the issue of portability and leakage. Writing in 401k Specialist, RCH's Tom Hawkins examines Townsend's remarks to her EBRI audience, which revealed that she has a clear grasp of the magnitude of the cashout leakage problem, as well as its most-promising solution – enabling plan-to-plan portability.

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