How you cancel an Empower account depends on which kind you have. The free personal dashboard closes with a support ticket. An employer-sponsored retirement plan — a 401(k), 403(b), or similar account held at Empower — closes through a distribution request, and the option you pick decides whether you keep your money or hand a large piece of it to the IRS. A direct rollover to another qualified plan or IRA is almost always the cleanest exit, because it avoids the 20% mandatory federal withholding and the 10% early withdrawal penalty that can hit a cash payout.
Closing the Personal Dashboard
If you only use Empower’s free dashboard to track and aggregate accounts, log in and open a support ticket. In the ticket form, choose “Dashboard Issues” from the dropdown, then “I cannot delete an account from my dashboard.” Empower’s support team forwards the request to engineering and confirms once the dashboard has been removed.1Empower Personal Dashboard Support. How Can I Submit a Request to Empower Personal Dashboard to Delete the Personal Information You Have Collected About Me
Before you submit the ticket, go into your profile settings and de-link any connected bank accounts or external institutions. Deleting the dashboard permanently removes your historical performance tracking and synced data. It has no effect on any employer-sponsored retirement assets you hold at Empower. Those follow a completely separate process.
Before You Close a Retirement Account
Three things can quietly cost you money if you rush the closure. Check them first.
Vesting
Your own salary deferrals are always 100% yours. Employer matching and profit-sharing contributions usually follow a vesting schedule, and if you close the account before you’re fully vested, you forfeit the unvested portion.
Federal law caps how long a defined contribution plan can stretch its schedule:2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 411 – Minimum Vesting Standards
- Cliff vesting: 0% vested until three years of service, then 100%.
- Graded vesting: 20% after two years, rising by 20% each year until 100% after six.
Log in to the participant portal and compare your vested balance to your total balance. The gap is what you’d lose by closing now. If you’re a few months from a vesting bump, waiting may be worth more than moving.
Outstanding 401(k) Loans
If you borrowed from your 401(k) through Empower and haven’t finished repaying, closing the account triggers a loan offset. The unpaid balance is treated as an actual distribution, so it becomes taxable income. Under 59½, the 10% early withdrawal penalty applies to the offset amount too.3Internal Revenue Service. Plan Loan Offsets
There is a safety valve. If the offset happens because you separated from your employer or the plan terminated, you have until your tax filing deadline for that year, including extensions, to roll the offset amount into another qualified plan or IRA. For most people that’s roughly mid-October of the following year. Rolling it over avoids the tax hit entirely.3Internal Revenue Service. Plan Loan Offsets
Required Minimum Distributions
If you’ve reached RMD age, you have to take the current year’s RMD before closing the account. RMDs cannot be rolled over. Under current law, RMDs start at 73 if you were born between 1951 and 1959, and at 75 if you were born in 1960 or later.4Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Plan and IRA Required Minimum Distributions FAQs
Missing an RMD costs 25% of what you should have withdrawn. If you catch it and take the distribution within the correction window of roughly two years, the penalty drops to 10%.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 4974 – Excise Tax on Certain Accumulations in Qualified Retirement Plans Satisfy the current-year RMD first, then roll the rest wherever you want it.
Choosing How the Money Leaves
You have three real options: a direct rollover to another qualified plan or IRA, a full cash distribution, or a partial withdrawal. The tax treatment is different enough that the choice can be worth thousands of dollars on a mid-sized balance.
A direct rollover is the most tax-efficient. Empower sends the balance straight to the receiving plan or IRA, nothing is withheld, and no penalties apply. Because the money never passes through your hands, the IRS treats it as a transfer rather than a distribution.6Internal Revenue Service. Rollovers of Retirement Plan and IRA Distributions
A full cash distribution is where people get hurt. Empower must withhold 20% for federal income taxes before sending you anything.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 3405 – Special Rules for Pensions, Annuities, and Certain Other Deferred Income If you’re under 59½, you also owe a 10% early withdrawal penalty on top of regular income taxes when you file.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 72 – Annuities; Certain Proceeds of Endowment and Life Insurance Contracts On a $50,000 balance, that combination can easily consume $15,000 or more depending on your bracket.
The 60-Day Indirect Rollover Trap
If you take a cash distribution and then decide you want to preserve the tax deferral, you have exactly 60 days from the day you receive the funds to deposit the full amount into another qualified retirement account. The countdown starts the day after the check arrives or the money hits your bank, not the day it was mailed.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 402 – Taxability of Beneficiary of Employees Trust
Here’s the catch. Because Empower already withheld 20% for taxes, you only received 80% of your balance. To roll over the full amount and avoid any taxable income, you have to come up with the missing 20% from your own pocket and deposit the entire original balance into the new account. If you only roll over what you actually received, the withheld portion is treated as a taxable distribution. You’ll get the withholding back as a tax refund when you file, but you’ve created a tax event you didn’t need. This is why a direct rollover is almost always the better move.
Submitting the Retirement Plan Closure Request
Before Empower processes any distribution, they have to send you a 402(f) notice explaining your rollover options, the withholding rules, and the consequences of taking cash. You have at least 30 days to review it before the distribution goes out, though you can waive that waiting period to move faster.10eCFR. 26 CFR 1.402(f)-1 – Required Explanation of Eligible Rollover Distributions
Call Empower’s participant services at 855-756-4738 to start the process or ask about your plan’s specific requirements.11Empower. Contact Empower Most plans also let you initiate a distribution request through the online participant portal, and completed forms can be uploaded through the secure document center.
Whether your employer has to approve the request depends on how your plan is set up. Some plans authorize Empower to process withdrawals directly once the request meets the plan’s rules. Others route the request to the Plan Administrator through Empower’s Plan Service Center for review first.12Empower. Withdrawal Processing Overview If you’re still actively employed with the plan sponsor, most plans restrict distributions to specific qualifying events, so full account closure often isn’t available until you’ve separated from service.
One detail catches people off guard: if you’re married and your plan is subject to spousal consent rules, your spouse has to sign a notarized consent form before Empower can process the distribution.12Empower. Withdrawal Processing Overview
Timing, Fees, and Tax Forms
Once the request clears review, Empower liquidates your investments and sends the funds to the destination you chose. Electronic transfers from Empower’s personal cash accounts arrive within one to two business days of the processing date.13Empower Personal Dashboard Support. How Long Does It Take to Transfer Funds Into and Out of My Account Retirement plan distributions can take longer, depending on the plan’s processing cycle and whether employer approval was needed. A physical check adds mail time on top. You can track the status in the activity or transaction history tab of the participant portal, and Empower sends a notification once funds are in transit.
Distribution fees vary by plan. One Empower plan fee schedule lists $15 for ACH payments, $40 for wire withdrawals, and $25 for overnight check delivery.14Empower. Summary of Plan Fee Changes and Investment Options Your plan’s schedule may differ; the fee disclosure is in your participant portal.
Any distribution from a retirement account generates a Form 1099-R for your tax return. Empower or the plan administrator has to mail it to you by January 31 of the year after the distribution. A 2026 distribution means a 1099-R by the end of January 2027.15Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Forms 1099-R and 5498 The form reports the total distribution, the taxable portion, and any federal tax withheld. A direct rollover should show as nontaxable. Review it carefully against your records; errors here are much easier to fix before you file than after.
If Your Old Employer Closes the Account for You
You may not need to close the account yourself. If you’ve left your employer and your vested balance is small, federal rules let the plan force you out. Balances at or below $5,000 can be involuntarily distributed. Amounts between $1,000 and $5,000 must be rolled into an IRA established for you rather than cashed out. Balances under $1,000 can be sent as a check. The plan has to give you at least 30 days’ notice, which is your window to choose your own rollover destination.
If the notice period passes and the money is auto-rolled into an IRA you didn’t pick, you can still move it to your preferred account afterward. But the auto-rollover IRA is often invested conservatively and carries its own fees, so it’s worth responding rather than letting the default happen.