罗宾·戴蒙特知道必须做点什么。2004年加入航空航天和建筑业制造商联合技术公司（United Technologies Corp.）担任首席信息官后，戴蒙德着手改进公司的固定收益计划. 当2008年到2009年的全球金融危机使员工的退休储蓄计划缩水30%时，她将注意力转向使总部位于康涅狄格州法明顿的UTC的固定缴款尽可能接近固定福利养老金。她对401（k）计划的修改包括终身收入功能、自动增加高达10%的供款以及美国公司最低的费用。
But Diamonte grew tired of watching retiring and separating plan participants become fodder for call centers trolling to open new IRA accounts. To counter this pressure, she and her peers at International Paper Co. and IBM Corp. have launched campaigns to inform employees of their choices when it comes to their 401(k) accounts.
对于Diamonte来说，这始于几年前，当时UTC为员工提供了一个自愿提前退休计划。她看到公司总部附近的95号州际公路上有一块广告牌，建议员工关闭UTC退休计划，把钱转到当地一家经纪公司赞助的个人退休账户上，感到非常震惊。“我们说，‘这太疯狂了；我们必须做点什么，’”迪亚蒙特回忆道。亚博篮球怎么下串
In response to the billboard, a UTC attorney fired off an e-mail to the brokerage that effectively said, “We don’t think the Department of Labor would like this.” The brokerage took down the highway ad, but scattershot fixes won’t stop such vendors from trying to persuade defined-contribution-plan participants that IRA rollovers are the best way to manage their retirement assets.
Late last year UTC began giving departing employees a brochure with the headline, “You’re leaving United Technologies. But your money in the UTC Savings Plan doesn’t have to.” The brochure outlines four choices: Keep your money where it is (retaining the customized mix of low-cost investment options); roll it over to a qualified plan of a new employer; roll it over to an IRA; or withdraw the money.
迪亚蒙特面临一场艰苦的战斗。随着美国固定缴款资产增长到数万亿美元，大大小小的券商和共同基金公司都做出了积极的回应，将离职和退休员工的401（k）资产抽真空。电视广告建议观众离开他们的“旧401（k）”，把他们的钱转到爱尔兰共和军帐户是无处不在的。
“That’s what’s alarming to me,” says Robert Hunkeler, vice president of investments at Memphis, Tennessee–based International Paper, referring to the large number ofIRA rollovers. “人们正从受保护的401（k）计划环境转向无保护的退休计划。”
的protection that Hunkeler cites is the fiduciary status of a corporate retirement plan sponsor like International Paper. As many private sector defined benefit plans were shuttered in the 2000s, Hunkeler and his peers at other large U.S. companies spent years crafting superior defined contribution plans to make up for the loss of a pension.
But the advantages of these plans can disappear when investors switch to a more expensive IRA account. With a value of $7.3 trillion at the end of 2015, IRA assets outweighed defined contribution plans’ $6.7 trillion (out of a total $24 trillion in U.S. retirement assets), according to the Investment Company Institute, a Washington-based trade association.
“People who keep their money in the [International Paper] plan are a distinct minority,” says Hunkeler, who last year enlisted the aid of a behavioral economist to write a letter urging employees to stay in the company 401(k). Eighty percent of retirees have taken their assets elsewhere; he wants to see 80 percent stay.
美国劳工部（Department of Labor）的新信托规则（fiduciary rule）可能有助于打破平衡，该规则要求退休计划供应商以信托身份行事，而不是推动人们投资于不符合自身最佳利益的项目。芝加哥北方信托资产管理公司（Northern Trust Asset Management）固定缴款全球主管萨布丽娜•贝利（Sabrina Bailey）表示：“随着新的DoL信托监管政策的出台，我们看到行业发生了变化，我们预计会有更多关于展期和将当前计划与其他雇主或个人退休账户进行比较的教育。”。
今年4月通过了失业救济金规定，部分原因是2013 report美国政府问责局（GAO）的报告显示，展期过程有利于向IRA分配。另一个发现是：劳动条例并不能确保401（k）计划向参与者提供关于他们所有分配选择的完整和及时的信息。Hunkeler、Diamonte和Raymond Kanner，IBM刚刚离职的首席信息官，旨在通过他们的教育活动来解决这个缺点。的most worrisome finding in the GAO report was exposed by undercover work. Pretending to be separating employees, agency staff phoned retirement plan providers. Through recorded conversations published on the GAO website, staff learned that “plan participants are often subject to biased information and aggressive marketing of IRAs when seeking assistance and information regarding what to do with their 401(k) plans.”
Some 401(k) plan participants already know when it’s best to stick with their former employer’s offering. One of them is Charles Van Vleet, who left UTC in 2013 to head the investment office of Providence, Rhode Island–based industrial manufacturer Textron as CIO and assistant treasurer. UTC’s well-designed, low-cost lifetime income retirement plan feature has helped motivate Van Vleet to keep his nest egg in Farmington.
As an investment professional, he knows more than the average employee about how to manage retirement assets. The big question for Diamonte, Hunkeler and Kanner: How long will it take for others to catch on?