The RON Playbook for Spousal Consents: Faster, Compliant Plan Distributions at Scale

Spousal consent is required for most retirement plan distributions, and it is the step where a participant's paperwork stops being about the plan and starts being about finding a notary. They schedule with a bank branch or a mobile notary, or the form sits on the kitchen counter until they call your service team three weeks later asking what happened.

In 30 minutes we will walk a compliant digital consent workflow from participant verification through notarization. Here is what we will get into:

• In-person notarization is a leading cause of distribution delay and participant drop-off, because the requirement lands on the participant rather than the administrator.
• IRS proposed regulations address the physical-presence requirement for spousal consents, and would open a path to remote online notarization that meets the witnessing standard.
• Remote execution produces a stronger consent record than a wet signature, since the participant's identity is verified to NIST IAL2 and the session is recorded and retained.
• Recordkeepers at high distribution volume need on-demand notary capacity rather than scheduled appointments, or the queue simply relocates.
• The internal business case is usually built on service-team call volume and time to distribution rather than on notary cost.