John Turner suspected that brokers were encouraging federal workers to ditch their top-flight retirement plan. So he went under cover.

The former U.S. Labor Department economist called representatives at companies such as Bank of America Corp., Charles Schwab Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co. He identified himself as a potential client grappling with what to do with his own nest egg.

Turner thought he knew the right answer: Leave it alone. As a legacy of his government service, he kept his money in the Thrift Savings Plan, considered the gold standard of 401(k)-type programs for its rock-bottom fees. Yet all but one company told him to roll over all his money into individual retirement accounts. On average, stock funds charge almost 50 times more than the government plan.

“It’s a scandal,” said Turner, director of the Pension Policy Center in Washington. “They are trying to sell me an IRA clearly not in my interest. It’s in their interest. They want to get the fees.”

The pitches are persuasive. Workers who leave jobs with the federal government transferred $10 billion last year out of the Thrift Savings Plan. Forty-five percent of participants who left federal service in 2012 removed all of their funds from the plan and closed their accounts by the end of 2013. To investigate this exodus, the government expects to survey departing workers later this year.

‘Popular Target’

“Swayed by the financial industry’s marketing efforts,” Thrift Savings Plan members in recent years “have become an even more popular target” for companies luring them into higher-cost IRAs, Gregory Long, the plan’s executive director, wrote in a May memo to board members.

Companies offering IRAs said they aren’t advising Thrift Savings Plan holders to leave and are merely offering attractive options, such as funds with superior returns. Former federal employees and other customers roll over their retirement money because they want more choices and advice and are seeking to consolidate accounts in one place, they said.

“If they want the relationship and advice, then they will have the expenses and fees of an IRA,” said Wells Fargo Advisors spokeswoman Rachelle Rowe.

Bloomberg News found one company that caters to the military promised “no-fee” IRAs -- language that the financial industry’s own self-regulatory group has called misleading -- and another offered a $200 bonus to roll over. Other companies are advertising “Gold IRAs,” which invest in precious metals that can subject buyers to huge price swings and markups.

Cash Flood

The federal departures are part of a flood of cash cascading out of 401(k) and similar plans. Former employees transferred $324 billion into individual retirement accounts in 2013, up about 60 percent in a decade, according to Cerulli Associates, a Boston-based research firm. As a result, IRAs hold $6.5 trillion, more than the $5.9 trillion in 401(k)-style accounts.

Former employees at major companies such as AT&T Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and United Parcel Service Inc. have complained that sales representatives persuaded them to roll over their 401(k)s into high-cost, unsuitable IRA investments, according to a three-month Bloomberg News investigation in June.

The Labor Department has said it will propose rules in January that brokers and other advisers act in clients’ best interest during rollovers, a so-called fiduciary standard. Brokers are generally held to the lower standard of selling products that are suitable for their customers, meaning they don’t have to put their clients’ interests first as long as they select appropriate investments.

Tempting Target

Federal employees are a tempting target for financial companies. To supplement their traditional pensions, they participate in the Thrift Savings Plan, the largest 401(k)-type plan in the U.S. It oversees $418 billion for 4.6 million current and former federal employees, including the armed forces, park rangers, FBI agents and members of Congress. As in a 401(k), an employee sets aside money in a menu of mutual funds that isn’t taxed until withdrawal.

Benefiting from economies of scale, the Thrift Savings Plan offers funds far cheaper than most 401(k)s. Its average fee is .029 percent -- or 29 cents per $1,000 invested. The average 401(k) plan participant pays about 20 times as much for a stock mutual fund, according to a July study by the Investment Company Institute, a Washington-based mutual-fund trade group.

Investors who bought mutual funds on their own pay even more; stock funds charge almost 50 times as much, on average. An investor with $500,000 in the government plan who shifted to retail stock mutual funds with average expenses would pay almost $7,000 a year more.

The government program has 10 options. Employees can build a portfolio from five low-cost vehicles: three stock funds tracking U.S. and international indexes, a bond index fund and a “G Fund” that invests in government securities. The federal government guarantees that the G Fund won’t lose principal, unlike options available to the general public.

Workers can also choose from five “life-cycle funds.” These offerings invest in the same five options in proportions reflecting the years that employees have left until retirement, growing more conservative as they age.

Funds Outperform

Aided by their low expenses, the funds in the government plan generated superior investment performance. In the 10 years ended in 2013, all five underlying funds outperformed the average return of similar offerings, according to an analysis by Morningstar Inc., the Chicago-based fund-tracker. The G fund and the option that invests in an index of small and medium-sized companies bested more than 90 percent of similar funds.
 

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