September 4, 2026
The Thrift Savings Plan is expanding its digital services as it looks to make managing retirement savings easier for participants and their families.
Jim Kaplan, Director of External Affairs for the TSP, outlines a series of improvements ranging from a new Life Events Hub to electronic payments, stronger account security and streamlined retirement withdrawals.
The new TSP Life Events Hub went live September 1. Kaplan says the tool is designed to simplify the process families face after a TSP participant dies.
Previously, beneficiaries may have needed to fax or mail documentation to report a death and begin transferring funds. The new hub allows family members to create an account, submit required documents electronically and follow their progress online.
“You'll be able to upload the documents, keep track of how they're being reviewed and processed, and know exactly when those funds are going to be available to the beneficiaries,” Kaplan says.
The objective is to make an already difficult process more straightforward while ensuring TSP follows legal requirements and participants’ wishes.
The Life Events Hub is also part of a broader effort to improve the participant experience.
Kaplan says TSP plans to increase its use of digital payments, allowing participants to receive withdrawals and loans electronically rather than waiting for a Treasury Department check in the mail.
Security is another priority. TSP is exploring phishing-resistant multifactor authentication to provide additional protection when participants access their accounts.
Other planned improvements include implementing the SECURE 2.0 saver’s match and making installment payments easier to adjust. Kaplan says a participant receiving $500 per month previously would need to cancel that payment arrangement and create a new one to change the amount to $600. TSP has streamlined that process so participants can make the change in one step.
The improvements will roll out over the next year, with some potentially arriving in January, February or March. Kaplan says development will continue over the next year or two, while some electronic payment improvements are already underway.
TSP is also seeing participants embrace another recently introduced capability: Roth in-plan conversions.
Kaplan says more than $1 billion has moved from traditional TSP accounts into Roth accounts since the capability launched earlier this year. The activity represents more than 49,000 transactions.
While that remains relatively small compared with the overall size of the TSP, Kaplan says the activity demonstrates demand from participants interested in using Roth accounts as part of their future tax planning.
Determining which new capabilities to introduce involves looking beyond individual requests.
Kaplan says TSP examines what other retirement plans offer, conducts research, reviews why participants leave the plan and gathers feedback through focus groups and other outreach. The organization also receives input from its advisory council, which includes labor unions, employee organizations and management associations.
The goal, Kaplan says, is to identify capabilities participants actually want while making sure investments provide meaningful benefits.
“We don't want to spend the participants' money developing a capability that very few people are going to use,” Kaplan says.
For TSP, that means continuing to evaluate new technology through a straightforward question: will it make the experience better for participants and their beneficiaries?