Market for 401(k) Rollovers Eludes Funds
Wall Street Journal (07/19/01) Vol. 35, No. 27 p.C21; Lucchetti, Aaron
As people change jobs more frequently, or lose them or retire,
mutual-fund companies risk losing their accumulated 401(k) assets from
the plans they have managed since the 1990s. Many employees roll their
401(k)s into IRAs when they leave jobs, and a new Morgan Stanley study
shows that only about one in five such rollovers stay with the same
investment provider; study author Henry H. McVey points out that
mutual-fund companies are not set up to retain retirement money when
employees roll the funds over. But the rollover IRA market is too big
for the fund companies to ignore--Vanguard Group has built a unit over
the past two years to handle money moving out of 401(k)s, and its
representatives discuss options for people leaving Vanguard 401(k)
plans, including rolling the money into a Vanguard IRA. McVey also
notes that even if an employee moves money from a 401(k) managed by a
fund company to a securities firm account, the money may eventually be
invested in some of the fund firm's products.