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THRIFT INVESTMENT BOARD ANNOUNCES DELAY OF NEW RECORD KEEPING SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION

        Washington, D.C. (October 11, 2002) – The Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board today announced that its newly developed record keeping system for the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) will not be implemented in November 2002 as had been targeted. The system has been built and historical participant records required for migration to the new system have been converted; verification of their accurate and complete conversion is almost finished. However, results of the "parallel testing" phase -- using actual daily transaction input from Federal agencies -- have demonstrated that the system does not process certain very high volumes of TSP transactions which occur periodically (such as contributions from the U.S. Postal Service) with enough reserve time to resolve any processing problems that might arise. (With nearly three million participants, the TSP has the largest daily transaction volume of any 401(k)-type plan in the world.)

        Evaluation of approaches to achieve the requisite increase in the system's processing speed is now underway, but sufficient progress has not yet been made in this effort to permit the establishment of a new schedule for system implementation. The Board will announce a schedule for implementation when it has the information to do so. In the interim, the Board will continue to use its current well-proven monthly valued system.

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