InvestorCOM finds 44% of rollovers occur before savers turn 59½

An InvestorCOM analysis of 50,000 transactions over the 12 months ending in September found that 44% of rollovers happened before the account holder turned 59½, Financial Planning reported.

The 59½ threshold is when savers can take penalty-free distributions from workplace plans and IRAs. Six experts on an InvestorCOM webinar said advisors who win rollover business begin working with plan participants years earlier.

Brian Brashaw, vice president of employer plan solutions at Merit Financial Advisors, said support for plan participants usually needs to start "long before they become a client."

"If you're meeting an employee at the moment of termination or distribution from an employer, you're too late," Brashaw said. He added that a recordkeeper wins a rollover because it has been "the face of their biggest asset in the 401(k) for a really long time."

Brashaw described "convergence"—the blending of plan services and wealth management—as a byproduct of a wider firm strategy rather than a strategy in itself. He traced the investment life cycle "from degree to death": student loan debt, a house purchase, paying down that debt, then workplace saving.

The 59½ milestone still matters—56% of the analyzed rollovers came at or after that age—but in Brashaw's account, waiting for it means surrendering the years of contact that decide where the money lands.