When it comes to helping their employees achieve a comfortable retirement, some companies have been more successful than others. A recent survey by亚博赞助欧冠那in partnership with Prudential, of more than 500 sponsors of 401(k) plans with assets of $50 million and above and nearly 300 consultants and advisers, revealed some striking differences among plans of different sizes and from different industries. Sponsors' self-assessment as to their overall plan health and participants' prospects for a secure retirement varied dramatically, as did participation rates and availability of automatic enrollment, auto-escalation and target date funds.
“Size of company is generally the primary driver” of differences between plans, says Ryan Gardner, managing partner and senior consultant at Fiduciary Investment Advisors, which advises clients with an average $100 million to $200 million in assets. “The larger plan sponsors, regardless of industry, tend to have more internal resources to allocate to the administration of their retirement plan.”
不到一半(49%)的雇主与50美元million to $100 million in assets rated their plan's overall health excellent or near-excellent, compared with 65 percent of those with more than $100 million; only 47 percent of the smaller plans rated themselves effective at helping employees achieve a successful retirement, versus 57 percent of larger plans. This disparity reflects factors that may be endemic to companies of differing size and scale of resources. A solid majority (59 percent) of larger plans said they were able to obtain a highly competitive fee structure, for example, compared with 45 percent of the smallest.
A case in point is Sandia Corp., which has a $3.2 billion 401(k) plan with nearly 11,000 participants, many of them long-term employees who also participate in a defined benefit plan that is closed to new hires. To save on fees, the 401(k) offers collective trusts and separate accounts rather than retail mutual funds. “In some cases we've negotiated lower fees because of the size of the combined assets in our pension and defined contribution plans,” says Leah Mitchell, manager of retirement investment management.
行业之间的差异往往是剧烈的。虽然据报道，他们的一半以上的员工参加了他们的直流计划，但在医疗保健公司中，只有58％的人参加，而金融服务公司的69％，例如资本生产商70％。更令人震惊的是，只有43％的医疗保健公司为整体计划健康提供了高分;能源和公用事业公司的下一个最低分数为53％。良好的医疗保健（42％）和能源和公用事业公司（39％）表示，他们在帮助参与者获得成功退休的情况下非常有效，而57％的金融服务公司和73％的基本材料供应商。显然，大量的医疗保健和能源公司觉得他们可以为他们的直流计划参与者做得更好。
Industry differences in participant behavior also stood out. Plan sponsors said employees are not saving enough at almost three-quarters (74 percent) of health care companies and more than six out of ten consumer and retail companies (62 percent). Employees are far less likely to accept the default option when automatic enrollment is offered at health care (37 percent) and technology, media and telecommunications companies (42 percent) than at energy and utility companies (70 percent), for example. Although some of the findings were to be expected—financial services and business and professional firms generally reported healthier plans and better saving and investment practices by their participants—others raised questions.
詹妮弗·佛罗丹明，馆咨询小组的定义贡献练习领导者，其中约有50％的建议资产与医疗保健系统和医院客户，注意到一些行业的结构问题，包括医疗保健，可以让雇主提供最佳的直流计划。弗推丁票据在过去十年中，卫生保健部门已经看到了广泛的合并和重组活动，导致遗留计划设计特征的计划，这些功能通常不匹配给赞助商目前的员工人口统计学。在某些情况下，付出良好付费医生的贡献率通常很低，因为他们在他们的直流计划之外有很大的积蓄，他们依靠他们的退休。“此外，医疗保健组织往往有一个公平数量的工人，他们可能没有资格参加计划或者可能已经与另一名雇主一起参加计划，”Flodin说。
然而，没有行业是单片。事实上，在我们的调查以及一对一的采访中，我们发现每个行业的公司都有每一个尺寸都有在实现计划健康方面的弱点。在金融服务公司，63％的计划赞助商表示员工不够省额。帕特里克Paynter表示，在太平洋地生保险公司（Pacific Perive）的计划提供了2,300美元的积极参与者，其中超过2,300名积极参与者，通常具有高储蓄水平，500多名参与者仍然贡献了不到6％的薪酬的薪酬。分析师。在能源和公用事业公司，相比之下，不到一半的计划赞助商表示员工不够省额。
较小的计划与采用增长和节约率的采用功能的更大的计划很可能。百分之九十百万，在未来三年内预计少于1亿美元的资产计划 - 与超过10亿美元的计划（93％） - 较小的计划（89％），几乎与较近的水平相同期望提供自动升级，而不是最大的计划（87％）。超过八大计划（81％），未来1亿美元的计划预计将在明年提供目标日期基金，尽管他们仍然滞后于超过10亿美元（93％）。
“Nudges” like these are one reason smaller companies may be raising their game. And while many of them may have fewer resources to devote to their DC plan, larger companies face many of the same challenges—in particular, workforce diversity. “Most plans have a range of participant demographics, and you need a way to reach all these participants,” says Gardner. “We have large investment companies as clients, and one might assume that the majority of participants are sophisticated investors. But within these plans are also support staff, operations, administration and others whose expertise is in these areas other than investments.”
At distiller Brown-Forman Corp., which sponsors corporate and union plans with a collective $448 million in assets and 2,600 participants, the usual pattern is reversed, and employees under 30 may be better positioned at this stage in their careers to retire with an 80 percent income replacement rate than their older colleagues. While they save less—at 5.4 percent of salary, less than half the rate of boomers—many of the latter did not start saving early enough and only ramped up their saving rate in later years, says Donna Wimbec, senior manager of global benefits compliance. Automatic enrollment has helped younger employees greatly, she says, but she also credits Brown-Forman's employee resources groups (ERGs), which give subsets such as women and younger employees a forum to discuss issues specific to them and help to target and tailor communications more closely to members' needs. Wimbec and the company's recordkeeper have worked directly with the ERGs to understand their specific concerns and tailored the plan's education and communication campaigns to address those concerns.
Financial wellness plans, which link financial counseling and education with programs to promote emotional and physical well-being, are another way for plan sponsors to achieve closer contact with employees. Not only does financial wellness focus more on individual employees' needs, it enables them to identify financial issues that could affect their general health — and their workplace performance.
BMC Software, a tech firm with $700 million in 401(k) assets that launched a financial wellness program three years ago, has “a broad demographic base with a lot of different ages requiring different communication styles,” notes Natasha Taylor, director of global benefits. Companies with a similar profile should do their best to offer “as many tools and resources as possible,” she says.
For many smaller companies lacking resources, and for many in industries whose employees are less financially sophisticated or less focused on long-term saving, this is more difficult. But tools that can make a difference are more accessible to these companies than ever before. Automatic enrollment and auto-escalation can help them overcome employee inertia, or harness it to encourage saving. Target date funds allow them to put participants on a risk-adjusted glide path to a specific retirement saving target. Both plan sponsors and consultants note that tailored education and communication tools are becoming more widely available from recordkeepers and third-party providers. Together, the greater availability of automatic features and customized communications create opportunities to close the gap for smaller companies and those in industries that have struggled to boost participation and saving rates.
关于调查
本研究由机构投资者与审慎合作，确定在整个退休计划流程以及亚博赞助欧冠计划发起人，顾问和顾问如何克服它们的投资风险和行为挑战。
为了支持这项研究，一项调查分发给了2016年1月至2016年1月和2月之间的制度投资者的受众的受众，以及顾问亚博赞助欧冠和顾问。我们收到了511份完成的调查答复，从计划的赞助商受众和295次完成了顾问和顾问的调查答复。
Auto Enrollment:An automatic contribution arrangement that can be used as a feature in a retirement plan to allow employers to enroll employees in the company’s plan automatically upon meeting eligibility requirements.
自动升级：A plan design option that allows a plan sponsor to increase participant deferrals annually by a set increment.
风险：投资涉及风险。一些投资比其他投资更有风险。投资回报和主要价值将会波动，售出的股票可能比原始成本更多或低，并且可以赔钱。过去的性能不保证未来的结果。资产配置和多元化不保证利润或防止市场下降损失。
目标日期是近似日期探讨tors plan to retire and may begin withdrawing their money. The asset allocation of the target date funds will become more conservative as the target date approaches by lessening the equity exposure and increasing the exposure in fixed income type investments. The principal value of an investment in a target date fund is not guaranteed at any time, including the target date. There is no guarantee that the fund will provide adequate retirement income. A target date fund should not be selected based solely on age or retirement date. Participants should carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses of any fund before investing. Funds are not guaranteed investments, and the stated asset allocation may be subject to change. It is possible to lose money by investing in securities, including losses near and following retirement.
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