Federal Retirement Thrift

Investment Board

2020 Thrift Savings Plan 

Education Efforts 
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Introduction.......................................................................................................................3

Communications...............................................................................................................4

Website (tsp.gov)..............................................................................................................4

Emails................................................................................................................................4

Multimedia........................................................................................................................5

One-on-One Participant Communications........................................................................7

Training for Agency/Service Representatives and Participants...................................8

Contents
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We are pleased to provide this summary of our education efforts in 2020 in response to the following 

requirement contained in the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) Open Elections Act of 2004: 

The Board shall annually report to the Committee on Governmental Affairs of the Senate and the Committee 

on Government Reform in the House of Representatives on its Thrift Savings Plan education efforts on behalf 

of plan participants. Pub. L. 108‐469, §2, 118 Stat. 3891, 3892. 

In 2020, the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB) engaged and educated participants through 

the redesigned TSP website (tsp.gov); emails to participants; multimedia assets such as videos, webinars,

and a podcast; one-on-one communications; and customized trainings for participants, agency and service 

representatives, and military financial educators. 

We are committed to delivering compelling messaging that encourages participants to save for retirement; 

to educating, communicating, and interacting with participants to help them make smart choices; and to 

creating innovative products and programs to assist participants in achieving their retirement goals. 

Our education outreach efforts were again recognized this year with a prestigious Eddy Award from Pensions 

& Investments, an international publisher of money management news. The Eddy Award recognizes our 

participant outreach activities in the category of “ongoing investment education” for research, publications,

and communications related to adding Lifecycle (L) Funds in five-year increments.

 

Introduction 
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Website (tsp.gov)

In July 2020, we launched a redesign of our website with key improvements based on direct participant 

feedback and several years of research, focus groups, and user experience testing. Now TSP participants can 

more easily find the information they need with simple navigation and easy-to-understand content. 

In particular, we responded to participant requests to visually represent TSP fund performance by designing 

a new reporting tool for rates of return. We combined data that had been spread across three webpages—

summary of returns, monthly returns, and annual returns—and designed an interactive layout with charts to 

display each fund’s performance over time. Participants can also make selections to compare TSP fund 

performance with common benchmark indices.

Emails 

We use email to communicate news about the Plan and to perform educational outreach to participants and 

beneficiaries. 

Emails to All Participants

In 2020, we continued emailing our electronic newsletter, the Thrift Savings Planner on a quarterly schedule 

in January, April, July, and October. We send the e-newsletterto all TSP participants with an email on record 

who choose to continue receiving these emails. Along with education content about funds, contributions, 

and investing, the e-newsletters inform participants when statements become available in My Account. We

also send an electronic version of the Executive Director letter to participants in February to inform them 

that annual statements are available in My Account.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, we began sending periodic emails with timely TSP information to keep 

participants informed about our continuing operations, temporary procedures to assist with physical 

distancing, and effects of the CARES Act on TSP accounts. 

Targeted Email Campaigns

In addition to the e-newsletter, we occasionally sent emails in 2020 to targeted groups of participants. In 

February, we reached out to roughly 20,000 federal employees who had not contributed any of their own 

money to the TSP during the calendar year. We wanted to encourage them to increase their contributions. 

(Since eligible participants receive matching on the first 5% of salary, saving more would provide interested 

employees with additional matching from their agencies.) After three and a half months, all groups who 

received an email were more than 20% more likely to have started contributing.

Communications 
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We did a number of other projects with noncontributors in 2020. In the late spring, for example, we 

contacted roughly 7,000 federal employees who were not contributing to their TSP accounts. After three

months, those who received an email were 22-33% more likely to have started contributing. In the fall, we 

reached out to roughly 50,000 federal employees who had not saved during the entire year. After three

months, those who received an email were more than 30% more likely to have started contributing.

In the summer, we reached out to roughly 1,200 civilians and uniformed services members who were 1) 

eligible for matching and 2) on track to reach the IRS elective deferral limit before the end of the year. We 

let them know that, in most cases, if they reached the limit early, we wouldn’t be able to accept any more of 

their contributions for the year—and that, if they weren’t contributing, they wouldn’t get matching. After 

the end of 2020, we determined that more than one-third of those who received our outreach successfully 

adjusted their contributions and were able to save throughout the entire year.

In late summer, we reached out to more than 3.6 million participants to introduce our newly launched 

Lifecycle (L) Funds, which offered target dates in five-year increments. Participants without a current L Fund 

investment received a message explaining how target date funds can simplify and optimize TSP investments. 

Participants who already had savings invested in an L Fund received a message encouraging them to 

consider whether a new five-year L Fund would help them more closely target when they would need their 

money.

Finally, in the early winter, we reached out to nearly 1.1 million active participants turning 50 or older to let 

them know about the changes coming to the TSP’s catch-up program in 2021. We emailed the information 

to nearly 700,000 participants and mailed a postcard to almost 400,000 participants who didn’t have an 

email on record. 

Multimedia

In 2020, we produced educational videos for the TSP’s YouTube channel TSP4gov, posted recorded webinar 

sessions with TSP trainers, and produced a podcast episode. 

Videos 

• Update: Welcome to the TSP! Here’s What You Need to Know. If you are a new civilian federal employee, 

here’s what you should know about the Thrift Savings Plan.

• Update: Your TSP Investment Options: The Lifecycle Funds. In this video, we talk about the professionally 

designed Lifecycle Funds, also known as the L Funds.

• Update: Investing in Bonds. Learn what bonds are and how you can invest in them through the TSP.

Webinars(Recorded)

• TSP Investment Funds provides an overview of the TSP investment funds.

• TSP Contributions provides an overview of the TSP contribution rules.
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• TSP Post-Service Withdrawals helps you understand your post-service withdrawal options. 

• TSP Death Benefits provides an overview of TSP death benefits.

• TSP In-Service Withdrawals provides an overview of TSP in-service withdrawal options.

Podcast

• The Real TSP: TSP Account Security. Protecting your account is a top priority for us, but you also play an 

important role in keeping your personal information safe and secure. Join Chris and Robyn as they discuss the 

actions you can take to ensure you’re taking the right steps to protect your future income.
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One-on-One Participant Communications 

Our educational efforts also include one-on-one contact. We offer participants various ways to submit 

inquiries to the TSP including secure e-messaging, telephone calls, and written correspondence. Below are 

the totals in each category for 2020.

We also receive and answer general questions about the TSP via Twitter and Facebook.

Telephone 

Calls

2,451,206

Written

Correspondence

44,111

Secure

E-Messages

121,200
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By law (5 U.S.C. § 8350), the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is required to 

operate a training program for retirement counselors in employing agencies. This 

requirement ensures that employees are able to obtain current information and 

personal service in response to their retirement-related questions. Since 1987, we 

have worked with OPM to sustain a network of TSP agency representatives as part of 

this program. We conduct regular meetings to provide benefits specialists and payroll 

specialists with information about changes to the Plan. In 2020, we hosted a 

coordinators meeting webinar with 65 specialists receiving TSP updates for their HR 

offices. 

We provide free educational sessions to federal employees and uniformed services 

members. To overcome challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, we offered 

most 2020 educational sessions online as webinars. As a result of going online, we 

were able to expand our educational trainings and reach larger audiences. We held 

more events and reached more participants than in any previous year, with 132,755

attendees to 478 events. Of those, we conducted 56 live, face-to-face events with 

3,545 attendees and 422 webinars with 129,210 attendees. We also gave participants 

unlimited access to recordings of webinars by posting them to our YouTube channel

TSP4gov.

We continued our collaboration with the Office of Personnel Management, the 

Securities Exchange Commission, and the Social Security Administration to conduct 

joint trainings for Federal Executive Boards (FEB). These trainings extend our outreach 

to participants that are geographically dispersed, which FEBs help us reach more 

easily. We held these trainings online for the first time and included FEBs for 

Cleveland, Portland, Seattle, Boston, Chicago, Houston, and San Antonio. We offered 

two virtual tracks: one for early-to-mid-career participants and one for those nearing 

retirement. About 4,400 federal employees attended the seven trainings.

In order to extend our educational outreach directly to more participants in uniformed 

services, we also collaborated with Military OneSource on two Facebook Live events in 

2020. These sessions focused on how the CARES Act affected TSP participants and 

reached 1,527 viewers.

Training for Agency/Service 

Representatives and Participants