Recommendation: To better protect the retirement savings of individuals who change jobs, while retaining policies that provide 401(k) plans relief from maintaining small, inactive accounts, Congress should consider amending current law to repeal the provision that allows plans to disregard amounts attributable to rollovers when determining if a participant's plan balance is small enough to forcibly transfer it.
Agency: Congress
Status: Open
Comments: There has been no congressional action as of March 2020. Although bipartisan legislation proposed in February 2018 discussed changes to the amount of vested savings that could be forced out of a 401(k) plan, it did not address whether or not the definition of vested savings for this purpose would continue to exclude rollovers. As we reported in GAO-15-73, rollover savings are always vested when they are transferred into a plan account. If Congress looks further at amending rules related to the threshold for forced distributions, and particularly if that threshold is raised, it bears consideration whether all of an individuals' vested savings--including rollover amounts--should be included in the calculation of that threshold.
Recommendation: To ensure that individuals have access to consolidated online information about their multiple 401(k) plan accounts, the Secretary of Labor should convene a taskforce to consider establishing a national pension registry. The taskforce could include industry professionals, plan sponsor representatives, consumer representatives, and relevant federal government stakeholders, such as representatives from Social Security Administration, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, and Internal Revenue Service, who could identify areas to be addressed through the regulatory process, as well as those that may require legislative action.
Agency: Department of Labor
Status: Open
Priority recommendation
Comments: As of December 2019, the Department of Labor (DOL) has not allocated staff or other resources to look at convening a task force of stakeholders to consider the need for a national pension registry. The agency previously noted the PBGC's expansion of its registry of accounts left in closed defined benefit plans to include accounts in 401(k) plans. However, PBGC's expansion included only transfers from terminating 401(k) plans, not from active plans. In February 2018, bi-partisan legislation was proposed to create a national, online registry for much of Americans' retirement savings account information, particularly those accounts which might otherwise become lost. To create the proposed "Retirement Savings Lost and Found" or something similar would require coordinated regulatory action on the part of multiple agencies, which could only benefit from the initial work and findings of a pension registry task force. The need for access to consolidated online information about multiple 401(k) plan accounts is only growing. Therefore, we continue to recommend that DOL facilitate a task force of stakeholders to identify and discuss legal and other logistical issues critical to the potential creation of a national pension registry.
Recommendation: To ensure that 401(k) plan participants have timely and adequate information to keep track of all their workplace retirement accounts, the Social Security Administration's Acting Commissioner should make information on potential vested plan benefits more accessible to individuals before retirement. For example, the agency could consolidate information on potential vested benefits, currently sent in the Potential Private Retirement Benefit Information notice, with the information provided in the Social Security earnings and benefits statement.
Agency: Social Security Administration
Status: Open
Comments: SSA disagreed with this recommendation, but did seek legal guidance to determine if it is permissible to include a general statement encouraging potential beneficiaries to pursue any external pension benefits in its benefit Statement. SSA's Office of the General Counsel determined that it would be permissible as long as it includes information required by law and the information is accurate. However, as of March 2020, SSA continues to believe that adding such information would place SSA in a position to respond to issues or questions about ERISA and private pension plans, which SSA considers to be outside its mission and about which the agency has no firsthand legal or operational knowledge. While we appreciate SSA's concern about providing information or advice about private pension plans, the agency already has a procedure for responding to such inquiries. The agency's Notice of Potential Private Retirement Benefit Information directs recipients to contact DOL with any questions about private retirement savings. We would expect that any increase in individuals asking SSA about their retirement savings, which could result from making information on vested benefits more accessible, could be handled in the same way. SSA said it also believes that the current benefit Statement adequately covers the fact that people need other savings, pensions, and investments and the agency sends notices to people who may quality for other pensions. We welcome SSA's efforts to raise awareness about the role of private retirement savings in ensuring financial security and in to notify individuals of potential benefits. However, these efforts do not supplant the need for individuals to have early and ongoing access to complete information on their potential plan benefits. In February 2018, bipartisan members of Congress introduced legislation that would make this possible. The Retirement Savings Lost and Found Act of 2018 (S. 2474) would house SSA's data on potential private retirement benefits in a secure database, which would be searchable online by participants and beneficiaries prior to retirement. Whether the legislation is enacted or not, we continue to believe that SSA should work to make its valuable data on potential vested plan benefits more accessible to individuals before retirement.
Recommendation: To prevent forced-transfer IRA balances from decreasing due to the low returns of the investment options currently permitted under the Department of Labor's safe harbor regulation, the Secretary of Labor should expand the investment alternatives available. For example, the forced-transfer IRA safe harbor regulations could be revised to include investment options currently under the qualified default investment alternatives regulation applicable to automatic enrollment, and permit forced-transfer IRA providers to change the investments for IRAs already established.
Agency: Department of Labor
Status: Open
Comments: As of April 2020, DOL had not taken action on this recommendation. In 2019, DOL noted that it was engaged more generally with a range of stakeholders on issues surrounding missing and unresponsive participants with the goal of helping plans to locate and pay retirement benefits to missing participants and beneficiaries. We continue to encourage DOL to expand the safe harbor for IRAs created for forced transfers to include investment alternatives more likely to preserve principal and even increase it over time, such as what is permitted for qualified default investment alternatives under the safe harbor for automatic enrollment.
