DOL’s new Retirement Savings Lost and Found Database goes live

“The Department of Labor has launched the Retirement Savings Lost and Found Database,” according to the DOL. “While the database has been launched, we hope that future improvements will result in higher data quality so retirement savings can be returned to America’s workers and retirees. We encourage providers to respond to our voluntary request for information to help build a more robust database, and we will continue to work with our government partners to further improve the database.”

A key SECURE 2.0 provision required the DOL to create the Lost and Found Database to help employees find missing retirement accounts. In 2023, the DOL 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. 

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 needed 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.

EBSA will continue to work with plan administrators, recordkeepers and others to populate the database. “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.

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“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.”  

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.  

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. 

According to the DOL’s Fall agenda, the agency expects to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in July 2025 that “provides for the Department to prescribe regulations for the collection of information to carry out the purposes of the Retirement Savings Lost and Found,” according to the DOL.