Retirement & Telehealth · Retirement/Investment · Regulatory action
Empower Retirement
Headline
The SEC charged Empower Advisory Group, and the category is worth naming precisely because retirement plan participants almost never think about it…
Not independently verified. Verification status: Unverified - heuristic first draft. Publish state: draft unverified.
The SEC charged Empower Advisory Group, and the category is worth naming precisely because retirement plan participants almost never think about it: a 401(k) recordkeeper knows your age, income, contribution rate, account balance, investment choices, hardship withdrawals and loans - which together describe your financial position and your life stress more completely than a bank statement does. A hardship withdrawal is a documented crisis. Participants also do not choose the recordkeeper; their employer does, which is the same no-relationship structure as ADP and Workday.
- Severity
- Evidence tierUnassigned
- Claims confirmed
- Last verified2026-08-04
Primary source. None recorded — Unverified - heuristic first draft.
Terms
Arbitration
REPORTED DATA BREACH NOTICE (not verified this pass): a notice dated Oct 9, 2024 was reportedly filed with the Texas AG by an entity named 'Empower Management Group' (it is unconfirmed whether this entity is part of Empower Retirement) — specific scope/data types not detailed in sources reviewed this pass. A SEPARATE, more recent breach claim (referenced May 2026) is also under attorney investigation.
Data sharing
SEC ENFORCEMENT ACTION: the SEC formally charged Empower Advisory Group and Empower Financial Services for FAILING TO ADEQUATELY DISCLOSE CONFLICTS OF INTEREST to retirement plan participants — a regulatory finding distinct from the private lawsuit below. SEPARATE LAWSUIT (2025; status not re-verified as of Oct 2026; brought by prominent ERISA attorney Jerry Schlichter): alleges Empower engaged in 'a scheme to significantly mislead retirement plan participants and greatly enhance corporate profits' by USING PARTICIPANTS' OWN 401(k)/403(b) ACCOUNT DATA to identify and target people nearing retirement with recommendations to roll their savings into Empower's own fee-generating 'Managed Account' product — one named plaintiff was allegedly induced into a Managed Account just 2.5 years before her planned retirement date, based on conversations with Empower's own advisors. This is a genuinely distinct category of harm: using a customer's OWN financial data to identify and upsell them into a MORE PROFITABLE (for Empower) product, not a third-party data breach.
Fees and billing
Not itemized this pass beyond the data-misuse-for-cross-selling allegation above.
Contacts
Privacy contact. Not recorded.
Legal notice. Not verified this pass. If publicly traded: SEC Form 10-K cover page gives the official corporate address; the Secretary of State business-entity search in the state of incorporation gives the registered agent, which must accept service. If private: the state registered agent is usually the only reliable route.
Mailing address. Not recorded.
Evidence
No claims have been itemized for this row yet.
No sources are on file for this row yet.
Source vault
Link status: Candidate - not yet fetched
| Document | Last fetch | |
|---|---|---|
| Privacy policy empower.com/privacy-policy | Not fetched yet | NO (HTML only) |
| Terms of service empower.com/terms-of-use | Not fetched yet | NO (HTML only) |
| Website No URL recorded | Not fetched yet | — |
| Primary source No URL recorded Verification: Unverified - heuristic first draft | Not fetched yet | — |
Enforcement
No enforcement actions are linked to this row.
State statute
No HQ state on file, so no state statute applies by headquarters.