RCH Exceeds $4 Billion in Account Consolidations

CHARLOTTE, N.C., Oct. 30, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Retirement Clearinghouse (RCH) has reached another milestone, having completed consolidations for more than 155,000 retirement accounts with over $4 billion in total assets as of October 26, 2018. The firm remains the only independent party which consolidates retirement savings into active 401(k) or IRA accounts by facilitating the seamless transfer of savings between retirement accounts.

RCH has worked closely with plan sponsors, record-keepers, and participants to complete a variety of transactions—including assisted rollovers, automatic rollovers, assisted roll-ins, and automatic roll-ins—which transfer and consolidate retirement savings into a participant's existing 401(k) or IRA accounts. RCH's total consolidations include assisted rollovers into existing IRAs, numbering 82,700 accounts with $2.9 billion in total savings, as well as facilitated roll-ins to a participant's current-employer 401(k) plan, with more than $980 million in assets from 46,700 accounts. Included in the total roll-ins to a current employer's plan were more than 1,000 automatic transfers completed by the RCH Auto Portability service.

"We are pleased to report that an increasing number of plan sponsors are seeing the benefit of an unbiased consolidation service for both their active and separated participants," said Spencer Williams, Founder, President, and CEO of Retirement Clearinghouse. "Greater awareness is the first step toward closing our country's retirement-savings gap, as consolidation significantly reduces cash-out leakage. We will continue to work with sponsors and record-keepers to facilitate a diverse selection of cost-effective account consolidation services that help more Americans achieve stronger retirement outcomes."  

The RCH Auto Portability service, a new offering that automates the consolidation process for small accounts, has been in operation for more than a year. On behalf of a large plan sponsor in the health services sector, RCH completed the first-ever fully automated, end-to-end transfer of retirement savings from a safe-harbor IRA into a participant's active account in July 2017. To learn more about RCH's account consolidation service offerings, please visit: http://info.rch1.com/rch-managed-portability-service

"Missing participants and small accounts are at the root of many problems for plan sponsors," said Mr. Williams. "By significantly streamlining the process of moving and consolidating 401(k) savings balances, we are helping to improve outcomes for plan sponsors and participants alike. As these small accounts are the most likely to result in stale address records, actively consolidating these accounts upon job-change simultaneously reduces both the missing-participant and small-account problems."     

RCH Auto Portability consists of an electronic-record "location" function to search and identify instances where an individual has multiple retirement accounts; a proprietary "match" algorithm confirming that the located accounts belong to the same participant; receipt of the participant's affirmative consent for the transfer of their assets in an automated roll-in transaction, either electronically or via a representative; and the implementation and completion of the automated roll-in transaction.

About Retirement Clearinghouse
Retirement Clearinghouse, LLC is the leading provider of portability and consolidation services for defined contribution plans, acting as a trusted, unbiased intermediary between plan sponsors, participants, record-keepers and other parties. Retirement Clearinghouse's integrated financial technology, data and information solutions facilitate automated consolidation of small, redundant accounts for sponsors to improve plan performance metrics, and enable participants, regardless of account balance, to seamlessly transport their retirement savings through every phase of their careers.

Retirement Clearinghouse's portability solutions have been proven to cut cash-outs by over 50% and significantly increase average account balances. The firm's portability solutions include a domestic call center providing specialized assistance designed to enable end-to-end portability and account consolidation; uncashed check services; and the capability to search for lost and missing participants.

Originally established as RolloverSystems in 2001, Charlotte, N.C.-based Retirement Clearinghouse works with more than 24,000 retirement plans and has helped guide over 1.3 million plan participants with more than $19 billion in retirement savings. Retirement Clearinghouse is a portfolio company of The RLJ Companies, founded by Robert L. Johnson. For more information, please visit www.rch1.com.

About Auto Portability
Auto portability (https://www.rch1.com/auto-portability) is the routine, standardized, and automated movement of a retirement plan participant's 401(k) savings account from their former employer's plan to an active account in their current employer's plan. The process is designed to work within the existing platforms and data flows of the nation's qualified 401(k) plan system. Auto portability was conceived and developed to meet the needs of plan participants with small account balances, who often lack access to the portability solutions afforded to participants with larger accounts.

SOURCE Retirement Clearinghouse

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