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Last year, the Department of Labor began seeking the voluntary assistance of retirement plan administrators to develop an online search tool to help workers locate an administrator so they can claim lost retirement savings they left behind when they switched jobs.
Yesterday, the DOL’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) issued another notice requesting information from administrators that will allow it to begin populating the Retirement Savings Lost and Found database, its online search tool to help America’s workers locate lost retirement savings.
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Retirement plans, including pension and 401(k) plans, sometimes lose track of retirement plan participants-owed benefits. Retirement plans lose track of “missing participants” for a variety of reasons, including incomplete recordkeeping and workers changing jobs. In other cases, workers may lose track of their retirement plans after their former employer goes out of business or when companies merge.
SECURE 2.0 directed EBSA to establish the database to help missing participants and their beneficiaries find their retirement benefits by Dec. 29, 2024. To populate the database, the department needs retirement plan administrators, recordkeepers and other service providers to voluntarily provide the information as a first step towards making the database available to the public.
The Retirement Savings Lost and Found database started accepting data yesterday, and it is expected to go live by Dec. 29, 2024. EBSA will be working with plan administrators, recordkeepers and others to populate the database before it is launched to the public.
“The fundamental purpose of any job-based retirement plan is to pay promised benefits to the workers who participate in those plans and plan beneficiaries,” said Assistant Secretary for Employee Benefits Security Lisa M. Gomez. “Our goal … is to make sure that workers and their beneficiaries receive all the retirement benefits they earned and were promised through their working careers so that they can look forward to a secure and enjoyable retirement.
“The Retirement Savings Lost and Found database will be another tool to help plans carry out this responsibility. We all need to work together to achieve that goal, and we appreciate the partnership of the retirement plan community in moving forward.”
Related: DOL wants ‘excessive’ details from firms for its nw 401(k) ‘lost & fund’ database: ERIC
The notice of information collection request describes the specific data elements the agency is seeking and how information can be submitted. EBSA has received comments and coordinated with stakeholders on how to best collect and protect this data.
However, according to the ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC), EBSA is seeking "excessive amounts of additional information outside the scope of SECURE 2.0."
EBSA conducts extensive investigations into circumstances surrounding missing participants. Since 2017, enforcement efforts have recovered more than $7 billion in retirement benefits paid directly to missing participants and beneficiaries.
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Lynn Cavanaugh
Lynn Varacalli Cavanaugh is Senior Editor, Retirement at BenefitsPRO. Prior, she was editor-in-chief of the What's New in Benefits & Compensation newsletter. She has worked for major firms in the employee benefits space, Vanguard and Willis Towers Watson, as well as top media companies, including Condé Nast and American Media.
