Customer service bottlenecks have frustrated account holders, among other problems with recent changes. GAO said its review will start in November but gave no estimate for a completion date. Image: Sideways Design/Shutterstock.com
The GAO has said it will review issues related to TSP’s operating system launched at the start of June in response to a request from a group of House members who cited problems account holders have experienced including “difficulties accessing accounts, discrepancies in account balances, missing or incomplete information, and hours-long wait times to reach customer service.”
GAO said its review will encompass “the planning, contract award and implementation, as well as oversight by the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board” as requested by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., and others. While the GAO commonly accepts requests from members of Congress for reviews, it does have discretion to decline.
GAO said its review will start in November but gave no estimate for a completion date. Such reports commonly become the topic for congressional hearings.
Meanwhile, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has again pressed the TSP on the potential for investors to have some of their money in “Chinese companies guilty of human rights abuses, or ones that the federal government has explicitly identified as national security threats.”
Rubio and others initially had raised those concerns regarding a planned widening of the international stock I fund in 2020 to include emerging market countries, China among them, causing the TSP to shelve that plan. Earlier this year he temporarily held up votes on nominees to the TSP board seeking assurances that they did not support that change.
More recently, he and several other senators asked that the TSP not open its mutual fund window, which allows investments in mutual funds—including some with investments in companies of China. The TSP went ahead with that launch at the start of June, though, responding to him with a letter that he said “seemed to imply that TSP participants should figure out for themselves whether or not a mutual fund might be investing in a malicious Chinese company.”
In his latest letter, Rubio asked for information including what if anything the TSP is doing to remove funds that include Chinese companies blacklisted by the U.S. government for not complying with oversight requirements or that are alleged to engage in forced labor.
Rubio has introduced a bill (S-1742) to bar TSP funds from being invested in securities listed on Chinese exchanges. While that bill has made no progress, he may seek to add it to another bill set to come to a vote, such as the DoD authorization measure the Senate could consider next month after returning from its current recess.
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The Process of Retiring – OPM’s Benefits Determination Process
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