On Monday, Ravi Deo, the FRTIB’s executive director, stated in front of all TSP board members that they are tracking the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the TSP funds and other participating accounts. The board is monitoring the effect of the pandemic on their ability to provide service to their participants and ensure that the TSP funds are running smoothly. Not to mention, the board is also tracking the impact of the virus on the health and well-being of its employees and contractors. The board has come up with a team to look at these three aspects (mentioned above). “All groups meet regularly and recommend to their Chief Operating Officer Suzanne [Tosini], and me,” said Deo.
We can see that the running stock market volatility has impacted TSP funds and other participating accounts. For example, in participating accounts, participants have made more withdrawals in March compared to previous years and recent months.
On Monday, the latest data from Sophie Dmuchowski, deputy for TSP policy operations, confirmed that TSP participants made 96,000 withdrawals in February and 95,000 in January. The data of 19th March states that participants made 218,000 withdrawals. Inter-fund transfers (IFTs) have increased as well.
As we see the running trend, more participants have transferred $21 billion into the Treasury securities G fund between 24th February and 17th March.
Sean McCaffrey, the TSP’s chief investment officer, said this transfer of funds into G fund is done from the corresponding C, S, I, and L funds. That counted to the highest volume of Inter Fund Transfer activity on an absolute basis and as a percentage of assets for the three weeks since the Thrift Savings Plan put a restriction on IFTs in May 2008.
McCaffrey said that relatively small numbers of participants are responsible for these historic levels of Interfund Transfer. Only 5% of participants initiated an IFT between late February and mid-March. Or we can say, 95% of participants were not active during the measurement period.
McCaffrey said BlackRock is responsible for managing several TSP funds and has its contingency plans during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
All Thrift Savings Plan service centers will remain open.
All three Thrift Savings Plan contact centers (staffed with contractors) will remain open for now. The contact centers are receiving more calls than the average volume of calls. Those calls spike at a certain point in a day. Deo said they are still answering a large number of calls in less than 20 seconds, but this situation is getting worse, and they have toreduce the staff and slip the service levels to provide safety to all employees staffed with the contact centers.
The FRTIB is exploring more telework capabilities for staff at the contact center, though the employees (acknowledged by agencies) may face some difficulty operating calls from TSP participants.
The agency is looking into more telework options for its service bureau, processing units that are special, and the operations center. Deo said the company is working on the issues with teleworking. Their goal is to enable contractors to have access to teleworking shortly.
TSP contact centers will be processing all contributions extended by the participants and agencies and systematic withdrawals, participant withdrawals, and analyze changes in the contribution allocations and inter-fund transfers done online.
Some transactions need to mail in forms, which may look complicated, especially when the TSP is asked to reduce the staffing levels due to the growing number of cases of illness.
Deo said that the FRTIB has sped up the projects that were initially planned. Hopefully, these plans would help participants to upload and submit their TSP forms online.
Employees of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board are teleworking.
Employees of the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board headquarters in Washington, D.C., are teleworking since Monday. The workforce has been asked to telework until 3rd April (this date may change, Deo acknowledged in a statement).
Last week, an agency-wide telework “test” was conducted. Deo confirmed all 750 employees and contractors could connect into the private network of the Thrift Savings Plan. He further added that the FRTIB cleaned its Washington office as a precautionary measure in March.
Since mid-March, Deo and other TSP leaders have been active during this time and sending out daily email updates to other FRTIB workers. The agency has come up with a specific team to teach all employees teleworking and how to keep track of the sick leave and create guidance and other health resources for the workforce.
