BB&T Corp. in Winston-Salem, N.C., said Tuesday that it has begun offering automatic individual retirement account rollovers for commercial customers' employees who depart with low balances.
The Automatic Rollover IRA is a money market savings account created to help employers satisfy a Department of Labor regulation adopted last year.
The regulation requires retirement plan sponsors to transfer a departing employee's vested benefits into an IRA when the retirement plan has a "forced payout" provision, the employee's vested benefit is $1,000 to $5,000, and the employee gives no disbursement instructions.
Previously, most retirement plan sponsors with forced payout provisions would send a check to the departing employee for a plan balance of less than $5,000 if no disbursement instruction was given, the banking company said.
