Rollovers Fuel Multi-Trillion IRA Market

Washington, DC; June 3, 2026— Individual retirement accounts (IRAs) remain a central part of retirement saving for millions of US households. By year-end 2025, IRAs held $19.2 trillion in assets, accounting for 39% of total US retirement market assets, up from 24% two decades ago. The latest Investment Company Institute (ICI) study, The Role of IRAs in US Households’ Saving for Retirement, 2025, is based on ICI’s annual IRA Owners Survey, conducted from May to June 2025, which gathers information on the characteristics and activities of IRA-owning households in the United States.

Rollover activity has helped fuel recent IRA growth, allowing many Americans to preserve retirement savings accumulated through employer-sponsored plans. Households transferred $670 billion from employer-sponsored retirement plans to traditional IRAs in 2022. By mid-2025 about 27 million households, or 61% of traditional IRA–owning households, had traditional IRAs that included rollover assets, and 86% of households with rollovers said their most recent rollover included the entire retirement account balance. 

“IRAs are the largest and fastest growing component of the US retirement market,” said Shelly Antoniewicz, ICI Chief Economist. “They are an important saving vehicle, particularly for workers without access to a retirement plan at work. But perhaps their more important function is portability—allowing workers to take their employer plan benefits with them when they change jobs or retire.”

Rollovers Often Consolidate Retirement Assets
Percentage of households owning traditional IRAs that include rollovers, 2025

¹Multiple responses are included for all responses except for respondents who were required to take the money out of their former employer's plan. In mid-2025, 89% of traditional IRA–owning households with rollovers had multiple reasons for rolling over.
²Figure does not include households with traditional IRAs that made their most recent or only rollover because they were required to take the money out of their former employer’s plan.
Source: Investment Company Institute IRA Owners Survey

Rollovers are often used to consolidate retirement assets, giving households a way to bring savings from employer-sponsored plans into one place. In mid-2025, 63% of traditional IRA-owning households with rollovers said they wanted to consolidate assets, while 62% said they did not want to leave assets with a former employer. These decisions are often made with careful consideration, as 62% consulted multiple sources of information before moving money into a traditional IRA. 

Other key findings: 

• Individual retirement accounts (IRAs) play an important role in US households’ retirement saving. In mid-2025, 44% of US households owned IRAs. Traditional IRAs were the most common type of IRA owned (33% of US households), followed by Roth IRAs (28%) and employer-sponsored IRAs (4%). IRA-owning households often also had employer-sponsored retirement plan accumulations or had defined benefit plan coverage. 
  • IRA ownership also varied by age: households younger than 45 were more likely to own Roth IRAs than traditional IRAs, while traditional IRA ownership was higher among households aged 55 and older.
• The majority of US households have tax-advantaged retirement savings. Nearly three-quarters of US households had retirement plans through work or IRAs, while 86% of near-retiree households had retirement accumulations. 
• Recent years show a slight upward trend in contribution activity, although fewer than one in five US households make contributions to IRAs. Across all US households, 17% contributed to traditional or Roth IRAs in tax year 2024. Looking at households owning traditional or Roth IRAs in mid-2025, 38% made contributions in tax year 2024.
• IRA withdrawals were infrequent and mostly retirement-related. One-third of traditional IRA-owning households in mid-2025 took withdrawals in tax year 2024, in line with recent prior years. 

About the Study

“The Role of IRAs in US Households’ Saving for Retirement, 2025” reports information from two separate ICI household surveys. ICI’s IRA Owners Survey, which was conducted from May to June 2025, is based on a representative sample of 3,214 US households owning traditional IRAs or Roth IRAs. The IRA Owners Survey was conducted on the KnowledgePanel^®, a probability based online panel designed to be representative of the US population. The KnowledgePanel^® is designed and administered by Ipsos. ICI’s Annual Mutual Fund Shareholder Tracking Survey, which was conducted from May to June 2025, is based on a representative sample of 9,021 US households also drawn from the KnowledgePanel^®.