The app score belongs in recordkeeper due diligence

Recordkeeper due diligence has a new number to collect, and J.D. Power's 2026 U.S. Retirement Plan Digital Experience Study, released today, gives plan advisors a measurable reason to ask for it. Participants put their providers' mobile apps at 724 on a 1,000-point scale against 671 for plan websites, a 53-point spread the study credits to faster and smoother experiences, better visual appeal and information layout, and more personalized content.

The participants whose money moves the way a sponsor wants it to move are the ones rating the app highest. Among those with app satisfaction of 801 or above, half said they had rolled money into their current account from other retirement accounts, 60% said they would keep their assets with the provider after a future job change, and 49% said the digital channel left them with a much better view of their employer. Participants who downloaded their plan's app were 79% more likely to roll over assets from another provider than those who did not—association rather than proven cause, and an advisor taking it into a committee meeting should label it that way, but every behavior in the study points the same direction.

“If I leave my job tomorrow, that digital experience is almost solely responsible for whether I take that money and roll it into a 401(k) with my next job,” says Eric McCready, J.D. Power's senior director of digital solutions. He attributes the apps' edge to a mix of participant preference and provider investment, describing the app as the quicker touchpoint and easier entry point, with biometric login and a screen participants check constantly.

Providers have sorted themselves accordingly: Bank of America, including Merrill Lynch, ranked highest on both channels across the 17 companies evaluated, at 775 for website and 804 for app satisfaction, while Charles Schwab placed second on both, 735 on websites and 768 on apps, tied with Fidelity on the app score, and Vanguard ranked third on website satisfaction at 723. Bank of America also topped last year's index at 747 points, a different measure that scored retirement plan website satisfaction.

Fees and fund menus arrive with standard benchmarks and a decade of committee habit behind them, while participant-grade digital experience has no such template, which means an incumbent can clear every customary test while the participants most likely to move balances in and leave them there take their business to a competitor's app. The score belongs in the recordkeeper search file. As this publication has argued, the last mile of retirement is the new advisory battleground, and a 53-point gap between app and website says participants already treat the phone as the plan.

The case sharpens as rollover machinery gets faster. Our August reporting described a voluntary electronic process under SECURE 2.0 that would move retirement money straight to the receiving plan, and with every step of friction removed from that transfer, the departing participant's app experience becomes more decisive about where the balance lands. A plan committee now has two questions: what its recordkeeper's participants score the app, and what share of terminated employees leave their money behind.