While the focus of open MEPs policy initiatives is on small- and medium-sized employers – driving down the cost and administrative burden – the real beneficiaries are American workers, particularly minorities. (Photo: Shutterstock)

Over the past few years, we've written extensively about auto-portability — what it is, how it works and the significant, positive impact it will have on the retirement security of working Americans. Our positions have been supported by research, predictive models (including EBRI's RSPM) and real-world results from the initial implementation of auto-portability.

In this article, we address an important retirement public policy question: How would a pairing of auto-portability with open multiple employer plans impact the retirement savings of America's minorities, particularly African-Americans?

Our findings, presented at WISER's Annual Symposium on September 26th, reveal that Open MEPs alone can serve as an important catalyst to increasing minority and African-American plan participation levels, over a generation of savers. However, when Open MEPs are paired with auto-portability, the result is a dramatic, incremental increase in the preservation of minorities' retirement wealth.