The lingering problems with the economy continued to force defined contribution participants to borrow against their retirement savings as late as last year even as an improving stock market caused assets to rise, a report by the Investment Company Institute found.

At the end of the third quarter, recordkeepers reported that 18.3 percent of participants had outstanding loans. Before the Great Recession began in 2008, the rate had been 15.3 percent and had mostly been at 16 percent or below back to 2000.

U.S. retirement assets at the end of the first three quarters of 2013 rose $900 billion over a year earlier to $21.9 trillion dollars. A quarter of the assets were in defined contribution plans. IRAs and public pension plans accounted for about half of all assets, with annuities and private defined benefit plans accounting for the rest.