How to Connect Your Employer Retirement Account (401(k), 403(b), 457)

Last updated: August 20, 2026

Overview

To connect a 401(k), 403(b), or 457 plan to Mezzi, search for the company that administers the plan — not the employer you work for. Your plan lives at a recordkeeper such as Empower, Fidelity, Principal, or TIAA, and that administrator's name is what appears in Mezzi's institution search. Once connected, the plan's balance and holdings flow into your net worth, allocation, and Exposure X-Ray alongside everything else.

🧭 How to Connect Your Employer Retirement Plan

  1. Find your plan administrator's name. It's on your quarterly statement, on the login page you use to check your balance, or in the web address of that site. It is almost never your employer's name.

  2. Open the connection flow. Go to Connect accounts and choose Connect new account (or Connect additional accounts if you already have accounts in Mezzi).

  3. Search for the administrator. Type the administrator's name into Search thousands of institutions — "Empower," "Principal," "TIAA," "Fidelity NetBenefits," and so on.

  4. Pick the entry that matches where you actually log in. Some administrators have several entries. Choose the one whose description or URL matches the site you use for this plan. If more than one looks plausible, see the recommendations below.

  5. Sign in with your plan credentials. Use the same username, password, and multi-factor method you use on the administrator's own site.

  6. Wait for the first sync. You'll see "Syncing your account" and "We're syncing your account data. This takes about a minute." Balances usually land first; holdings follow.

  7. Check the holdings. Open the account and confirm the fund list looks like your plan statement. If positions show as cash or as unknown, that's a fund-mapping issue rather than a connection failure — see Why Do My Holdings Show as Cash Instead of Investments?.

💡 Why This Matters

Employer plans are the single most common place a connection stalls, and nearly always for the same reason: people search for their employer. Mezzi's institution list comes from our data providers, and providers index the recordkeeper, not the thousands of employers whose plans sit on it. Searching "Acme Corp 401k" returns "No institutions found. Try a different search term." Searching "Empower" returns the plan.

Connecting the plan matters beyond the balance. For most people the 401(k) is the largest single holding, and leaving it out skews allocation, concentration, and every piece of retirement advice Mezzi gives you.

Recommendations by administrator

These come from connections support has worked through directly. You can't choose a data provider yourself — Mezzi shows one recommended path per institution — so the guidance is always about which entry to choose in search.

  • Empower — if the first Empower entry fails or reports that the institution is no longer supported, go back to search and choose the alternative Empower entry. It routes through SnapTrade, which typically supports retirement accounts. This resolved the case it came from immediately.

  • Fidelity (NetBenefits and workplace plans) — Fidelity routes through SnapTrade first. Use your standard Fidelity credentials rather than a NetBenefits-only login if you have both. See Troubleshooting Fidelity Connections if the account connects and then disappears.

  • Principal, John Hancock Retirement, TIAA, Transamerica, VALIC, and Lincoln Financial — these route through Meld or Finicity rather than Plaid. Choose the entry whose name matches the retirement or workplace arm of the company, not the insurance or banking arm, when both appear.

  • Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) — add this one manually. TSP does not currently support a reliable connection with third-party apps like Mezzi. Connections authenticate, appear to succeed, and then ask to be repaired again within a day or two. Finicity has raised it upstream and there is no fix available. Follow How to Manually Add an Account in Mezzi instead, and update the balance when you check your statement.

Important Notes

Proprietary funds may not price correctly. Employer plans often hold funds with an internal code instead of a public ticker — NESUSS, ATRLCI, target-date series, stable value funds. These can land in Exposure X-Ray as unknown or as cash, and dividend estimates for them may show as $0. Email help@mezzi.com with the fund names and codes from your statement and we'll map them to comparable public securities, usually within a business day.

Your balance is usually right even when the breakdown isn't. If the account total matches your statement, nothing about your net worth is wrong — only the classification.

Manual is a legitimate answer. For a plan that can't hold a connection, a manually added account still counts toward net worth and still appears in allocation once you enter holdings.

🗨 Still Need Help?

Email help@mezzi.com or text/call (415) 763-6997 with:

  • the name of your plan administrator and the web address you log in at

  • what you typed into institution search and what came back

  • a screenshot of any error message

  • the fund names and internal codes from your statement, if holdings connected but look wrong

You can also schedule a support call.

Common Questions

  • Why can't I find my employer in the institution search? Because Mezzi lists plan administrators, not employers. Search for the recordkeeper on your statement — Empower, Fidelity, Principal, TIAA, Voya — instead.

  • Can I connect a 403(b) or 457 the same way? Yes. The account type doesn't change the process; the administrator's name is still what you search for.

  • Why does my 401(k) balance appear but not the funds inside it? Some plans send a balance without position-level detail, and some send positions without public tickers. Send us the fund list and we'll map it.

  • What if my plan simply won't stay connected? Add it manually. That's the honest answer for TSP today, and occasionally for smaller recordkeepers. A manual account still counts toward your net worth.