Changing Times: Impact of the shift in types of retirement plans

The days are gone when a typical employee works for the same employer for 30 or 40 years and then collects a check every month for the rest of his or her life. Although the majority of employees had little understanding of how a defined benefit plan worked, they knew exactly how much they would get each month at retirement. Together with what they would earn from Social Security, it was relatively easy to plan for the future.

Standard Items Appearing In An Investment Policy Statement

A retirement plan’s overarching goals are to help participants accumulate wealth during their years of employment and to provide them with income during their retirement.

The challenge for fiduciaries is to successfully navigate the options available and build an optimal investment menu that is designed to guide participant choices and improve their retirement readiness. Since plan fiduciaries may be exposed to personal liability, it is prudent to have a process in place for the selection and monitoring of investment options.

Plan fiduciaries should have an established framework on which they can defend their investment decisions should they ever be challenged. The process should begin with the construction of the plan’s Investment Policy Statement (IPS). Although not required by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), drafting an IPS is a fiduciary best practice. The IPS serves as a policy guide that can offer an objective course of action to be followed when emotional or instinctive responses might otherwise motivate less prudent action.

Understanding Your Retirement Plan Fee Methodology

Understanding your retirement plan’s fees is not only a good practice; it’s a fiduciary requirement as prescribed by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). The traditional enforcement mechanism has been DOL plan audits. More recently, high-profile litigation has driven plan sponsors to evaluate their plan fees. These fees can be grouped into several categories: record keeping, administrative, legal, plan advisory, investment, and education and communication. The principal reason fees have been thrust into the limelight is that plan participants often bear most, if not all of the cost of running the plan.

UPDATED REPORT! Report Offers Steps for Building an Optimal Retirement Plan Investment Menu

A retirement plan’s overarching goals are to help participants accumulate wealth during their years of employment and to provide them with income during their retirement.

The challenge for fiduciaries is to successfully navigate the options available and build an optimal investment menu that is designed to guide participant choices and improve their retirement readiness. Since plan fiduciaries may be exposed to personal liability, it is prudent to have a process in place for the selection and monitoring of investment options.

Strategic Benefit Services has outlined a four-step process for constructing an optimal investment menu that:

• fosters ERISA compliance;
• provides desirable investment choices for plan participants; and
• impacts retirement outcomes.

Complete the form below to download "4 Steps to Building an Optimal Retirement Plan Lineup for Participants". If you have any questions, or would like to begin talking to a retirement plan advisor, please get in touch by calling (855) 882-9177 or by email.

Plan Health: Here’s why you’re here

To assess plan health, comprehensive Annual Plan Reviews continue to be of value, and plan providers are developing more concise versions of the report — offered on paper or online. According to the Lincoln Financial Group study, You are here: Understanding financial wellness, retirement readiness and plan health, plan sponsors use plan health data to get quick, timely updates on employee retirement preparedness levels and to help meet their goals by leveraging data to make informed plan design decisions.

Next steps for plan sponsors:

1. Review year-over-year trends to identify patterns and opportunities.
2. Compare your plan by industry, asset size, and number of participants to set competitive goals.
3. Work with your provider to optimize participant data to help limit assumptions and provide more accurate reporting.
4. Continue to monitor traditional success measures — balances, contribution rates and diversification — while adding new metrics, such as income replacement rates.
5. Work with your plan provider, advisor or consultant to prioritize the aspects of your plan health data that are most valuable to you; reporting will be more valuable with your input.

To learn more about this research or to begin developing your organization’s action plan toward optimal plan health, please get in touch by calling (855) 882-9177 or e-mail us at sbs@hanys.org.

Retirement Readiness: Where do you need to be?

In the Lincoln Financial Group study, You are here: Understanding financial wellness, retirement readiness and plan health, plan providers agree that retirement readiness is unique to each individual. A single, accurate income replacement rate does not completely define retirement readiness. Yet, replacement rate is the one measure that seems to be gaining momentum among plan sponsors. Whether plan participants need between 70% and 85% of pre-retirement income, or whether they plan to retire at age 62, 65, 67 or older, plan sponsors are unanimous in the belief that translating assets to potential income is critical.

Take action on retirement readiness

1. Work with your recordkeeper, plan advisors and consultants to generate greater employee engagement, and seek an approach that makes it easy for participants to take action.
2. Ask for employee communications to demonstrate the benefits and impacts of measured, realistic, small steps and to promote content that’s neither simplistic nor condescending.
3. Encourage employee interaction with retirement planning tools and automated features.
4. Ask participants to provide key data during open enrollment, when they’re already thinking about their benefits.
5. Use your plan health reporting to monitor the plan design choices impacting retirement readiness and to identify employee groups who may need more help to get on track to meet their retirement savings goals.

To learn more about this research or to begin developing your organization’s action plan toward optimal plan health, please get in touch by calling (855) 882-9177 or e-mail us at sbs@hanys.org.

Financial Wellness: You could be someplace better

In the Lincoln Financial Group study, You are here: Understanding financial wellness, retirement readiness and plan health, plan sponsors reported that employees need financial education, and they believe instituting a financial wellness program leads to improved job performance and increased employee loyalty. The industry defines “financial wellness” as a program of financial topics delivered through multiple channels to help people minimize their financial challenges. Financial wellness is aspirational, and the path to wellness for participants involves setting reasonable goals and taking positive steps forward.

As financial wellness programs become more prevalent and significant over the next few years, we anticipate closer alignment with health and wellness programs. New service providers and program opportunities are rapidly emerging.

Best practice considerations

1. Talk with your retirement plan provider, advisor or consultant about available financial wellness resources.
2. Survey participants and build programs based on topics of highest interest, deepest need and greatest likelihood of success.
3. When implementing a new program, start small and gradually roll out new elements to the program.
4. Connect financial wellness delivery to health program delivery to make the most of employee time and attention spans.
5. Offer programs to all employees, not just plan participants. Include one-on-one and group meetings and webcasts during, before and after work, at lunchtime, and over weekends to accommodate employees. Encourage employees to bring spouses and partners, and make meetings mandatory for high-impact topics. 

To learn more about this research or to begin developing your organization’s action plan toward optimal plan health, please get in touch by calling (855) 882-9177 or e-mail us at sbs@hanys.org.

Understanding financial wellness, retirement readiness and plan health

In the study, You are here: Understanding financial wellness, retirement readiness and plan health, the Lincoln Financial Group explored three emerging trends in retirement plan administration.

1. Financial wellness programs. Similar to health wellness programs, financial wellness programs can be adopted by a plan sponsor to improve an individual’s financial health so he or she can accomplish specific financial goals, such as saving amounts sufficient for retirement. In many cases, low participation and savings rates in retirement plans are the results of an inability to save due to financial challenges, such as poor budgeting and credit card debt.

4 Best Practices for Implementing Automatic Features in Defined Contribution Plans

According to the SBS Retirement Plan Survey, approximately one-half of the responding retirement plan sponsors offer automatic enrollment. Offered in conjunction with automatic escalation, such features can positively impact participant behavior and improve retirement readiness. This article examines 4 best practices to be considered when implementing automatic features in defined contribution plans that can produce greater results per dollar of employer cost.

Background 

The utilization of automatic features in defined contribution plans has increased significantly since they were first introduced as part of the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA). More plans are adopting these provisions, resulting in higher participation rates among employees. Although this is a positive trend, certain design features actually thwart the success that could otherwise be achieved. Specifically:

• relatively low default deferral rates result in lower savings; 
• automatic enrollment is often applied to newly eligible employees only, disregarding existing employees who are not participating; and 
• auto-escalate provisions, if used, are often applied on an opt-in basis rather than an opt-out basis, and at rates too low to achieve targeted savings levels. 

Using Investment Menu Design to Improve Participant Outcomes

Many participants lack the ability, time, and/or desire to effectively make sound investment decisions and manage their accounts on an ongoing basis. Traditionally, many plan sponsors felt their responsibility was to offer a broad range of investment options together with employee education. The results, all too often, were that participants were overwhelmed with choice and rarely availed themselves of the education. In recent years, the trend has been to limit the number of investment options and guide participant behavior. The investment menu structure may be just as important as the actual investment options themselves. An effective menu design will address the various participant behaviors:

Properly done, a well-designed investment menu can direct behaviors and give participants the confidence they need to feel comfortable with their investment decisions.

Read Improving Participant Outcomes: An Action Plan for Plan Sponsors and start developing your action plan to improve participant outcomes. If you have any questions, or would like to begin talking to a retirement plan advisor, please get in touch by calling (855) 882-9177 or e-mail us at sbs@hanys.org.

Using Plan Design to Improve Participant Outcomes

Plan sponsors should review their current plan design features and consider how they drive participant behavior. Studies have shown that participants will often choose deferral rates at a level to obtain the maximum employer match. By stretching out the matching formula, the employer cost stays the same but the employee is encouraged to save more. For example, a plan that matches 100% on the first 5% could move to a 50% match on the first 10% of salary. The employer cost remains constant at 5% while at the same time employees are motivated to contribute up to the 10% level.

It is important to limit participants’ ability to use the money for something other than its intended purpose: retirement. Plan sponsors should consider limiting, if not eliminating, loan availability within their plans. Participants rarely understand the true impact of taking a loan from their account—“borrowing from themselves” is a common justification employees use. Although the current economic environment may not be the best time to eliminate loans, it should be something to consider for the future.

Read Improving Participant Outcomes: An Action Plan for Plan Sponsors and start developing your action plan to improve participant outcomes. If you have any questions, or would like to begin talking to a retirement plan advisor, please get in touch by calling (855) 882-9177 or e-mail us at sbs@hanys.org.

Participant Outcomes vs. Participation Rates: How to Succeed in Both Areas

Until recently, participant outcomes were not a great concern to most plan sponsors; even now, a relatively few number of plan sponsors use income replacement as a measure of plan success. A recent survey conducted by PLANSPONSOR magazine showed just 3.5% of plan sponsors use projected retirement income as a metric to assess their plans.1 Instead, the goal was to offer a plan with good investment choices, competitive fees, and a recordkeeping platform that would minimize the administrative burden on the employer.

The Search is On – What Plan Fiduciaries Need to Know to Locate Missing Participants

The Department of Labor (DOL) recently released Field Assistance Bulletin (FAB) 2014-01 entitled “Fiduciary Duties and Missing Participants in Terminated Defined Contribution Plans.” The FAB outlines the steps that plan fiduciaries must follow to meet their obligations under ERISA to locate missing participants and properly distribute participant account balances when a defined contribution plan has been terminated.

Automatic Features in Defined Contribution Plans

According to the 2014 Retirement Plan Survey conducted by Strategic Benefit Services, approximately one-half of the responding retirement plan sponsors offer automatic enrollment. Offered in conjunction with automatic escalation, such features can positively impact participant behavior and improve retirement readiness. This article examines some best practices to be considered when implementing automatic features in defined contribution plans that can produce greater results per dollar of employer cost.

New Report Offers Tips for Improving Retirement Plan Participant Outcomes

Defined contribution plans are and will continue to be a mainstay in the market. But, are they working?

Improving Participant Outcomes: An Action Plan for Plan Sponsors looks at some of the factors that plan sponsors should consider when assessing the value of the retirement plan offered to their employees. It also considers steps they can take to provide greater assurance that employees will be able to generate sufficient income on which to retire.