Vanguard Makes New Push to Help Clients Find Lost IRAs

Vanguard and Retirement Clearinghouse have expanded a partnership that aims to help investors reconnect with small-balance rollover individual retirement accounts of which they may have lost track.

Since 2021, the two companies have collaborated as they prepare to provide auto-portability services to 401(k) plan sponsors and their participants. Now, the two firms are broadening the collaboration to support search service for clients with lost IRAs.

As noted in a press release about the expanded collaboration, IRA accounts often are opened when employees change jobs through a rollover. Sometimes, particularly when the amounts are relatively modest, investors can lose track of these IRA accounts.

Vanguard says investors can also forget to make decisions about how to invest the rolled-over assets, often leaving assets sitting in low-yielding cash equivalents not aligned with their long-term retirement objectives.