How The Mom Project is helping women maximize their retirement savings

Changing jobs can come with a mountain of administrative work for both HR and the employee, leaving important tasks like retirement plan rollovers to fall through the cracks.

That’s why The Mom Project, a digital talent marketplace for professional women, and fintech company Capitalize have teamed up to help the organization’s talent base of more than 500,000 women find and consolidate their retirement accounts.

“One of the things that can often get in the way of saving for retirement is the fact that our accounts — like a 401(k) — are all tied to our employers,” says Gaurav Sharma, co-founder and CEO of Capitalize. “Employees often change jobs every three or four years, and they need to figure out what to do with the money that they’ve saved and how to interact with their brand new 401(k) at their new company.”

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Financial insecurity can be felt more heavily by women, who often bear the burden of full-time employment with personal responsibilities, like caring for their children or sick and elderly loved ones. Because of these costly responsibilities, only 39% of women say they are confident they will have enough money to last 25 years into retirement, according to data from Willis Towers Watson, compared with 54% of men.

The partnership between The Mom Project and Capitalize is meant to help female employees who have changed jobs — or who have left the workforce due to maternal or other caregiving needs — track down their old 401(k) and other retirement accounts and consolidate them, along with any new investments, into one easily accessible location via the Capitalize platform.

“Unfortunately many of us will do the wrong thing with our assets at that point of job change,” Sharma says. “About five million Americans will just cash out their 401(k) when they change jobs and another three million Americans will just leave that 401(k) behind. It's often the path of least resistance, but the problem is that you can very quickly end up with three or four different 401(k)s just floating around.”

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All of the talent within the Mom Project network will have free access to Capitalize’s suite of offerings, including 401(k) rollover and consolidation, as well as its concierge services to help with retirement planning and investments.

“It’s so important for mothers to be in control of their retirement planning and to feel empowered when doing so, every step of the way," Allison Robinson, founder and CEO of The Mom Project, said in a release. “We are thrilled to be working with Capitalize, because through this partnership, mothers will now have access to the extra resources needed in order to pave the way for a financially successful future for both themselves and their families.”