Next year's planned upgrade to the Thrift Savings Plan Web site will allow participants to submit questions about their accounts via a secure online messaging service.

The Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, which governs TSP, said at its monthly meeting Monday that it is now procuring the e-messaging system and has identified a team of employees who will respond to inquiries. The Web site upgrade will be rolled out to all participants beginning as early as January.

The current system cannot answer e-mailed account service inquiries. Today, participants' questions are answered by a call center that handles about 15,000 inquiries each day.

A version of the upgraded Web site, which will feature more interactive features, a new layout and better-organized information and charts, will be tested by roughly 5,000 randomly chosen participants in early October. That beta version will not include the e-messaging service.

New benefits

Executive Director Greg Long updated the board on progress in implementing a new law, signed in June, that extends new benefits to TSP participants. The new benefits:

• Automatic enrollment of all new federal civilian employees in TSP.

Automatic enrollment will likely begin in spring 2010. A related provision — the elimination of the six- to 12-month period that new employees must wait before receiving matching contributions and an automatic 1 percent contribution from their agencies — was implemented in June and helped drive overall participation up by 60,000 to nearly 4.2 million in July.

However, active-duty and reserve military participation in TSP declined slightly, from nearly 638,600 contributors to almost 637,000 contributors. Military service members are not automatically enrolled and do not receive matching funds.

• A new Roth 401(k)-type option that would enable TSP participants to contribute taxable income and then withdraw it tax-free at retirement. Current TSP contributions are taxed at withdrawal.

The board is preparing to create the new option over the next two years. It is talking to its vendors to prepare how it will overhaul its recordkeeping, accounting and other systems so it can offer the new option.

• A mutual fund option.

The board is not moving forward on that now.

July returns

TSP's stock-based funds showed improving performance in July: The C, S and I funds each saw respective returns of 7.58 percent, 8.66 percent and 9.74 percent.

The stock-based funds' returns also helped TSP's lifecycle funds, the L Funds, recover. The L 2040 Fund was up 7.01 percent; L 2030 Fund, up 6.16 percent; and the L 2020 Fund, up 5.16 percent. The more conservatively invested L 2010 and L Income funds were up 2.44 percent and 1.94 percent, respectively.

The more conservative G and F funds saw respective returns of 0.28 percent and 1.59 percent last month.

Participants had more than $223 million invested in the TSP in July. That's the most since last August, when participants had invested $227 million.