There is a need for this. It's actually something we should always do when using authenticated account... re-fetch it. The reason is that that instance of the hibernate object is probably not attached to a hibernate session, or might have already been updated. That instance is loaded as soon as you log in, but is not kept up to date with any changes. In order to get the most recent data you need to reload it. Maybe we shouldn't even be placing it in the context, just an id... but that's a bigger change.