When 401(k) Participants Go Missing: How Does It Happen, The Impact & What To Do!

It has never made a lot of sense to me how retirement plan participants go missing and lose track of sometimes thousands of dollars of their money.  My conversation today with Spencer Williams, the President & CEO of Retirement Clearing House shed a lot of light on just how this happens.  We tackle a host of related issues in a face paced back and forth dialogue which highlights some interesting findings from their recent study on the topic, we also hit on how missing participants factor into the concern around retirement plan leakage and what the impact is on both employers and employees when participants go missing.  Of course, before we wrap up we provide some concrete thoughts on how to address the issue in your plan and look forward to a few new concepts that might help with this in the future.  

Guest Bio

Spencer is Retirement Clearinghouse’s Founder, President and CEO. Retirement Clearinghouse is a specialized provider of portability and consolidation services for America’s mobile workforce and has serviced more than 1 million job-changing participants during Mr. Williams’ 9 year tenure with the company.  Prior to joining Retirement Clearinghouse, Williams served in a number of senior executive roles at MassMutual Financial Group, and as a retirement Services executive at Federated Investors, Inc.  

Williams earned his B.A. degree in English from the United States Naval Academy and an M.B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh.

401(k) Fridays Podcast Overview

Struggling with a fiduciary issue, looking for strategies to improve employee retirement outcomes or curious about the impact of current events on your retirement plan? We've had conversations with retirement industry leaders to address these and other relevant topics! You can easily explore over one hundred prior on-demand audio interviews here. Don't forget to subscribe as we release a new episode each Friday!