PLANSPONSOR Announces 2015 Best in Class 401(k) Plans

PLANSPONSOR honors 29 firms with new “Best in Class” 401(k) Plan Designation.

PLANSPONSOR-Story-Best-in-class-401k.gifPLANSPONSOR is pleased to announce its inaugural selection of companies for its Best in Class 401(k) Plans designation.

Recipients of the 2015 Best in Class 401(k) Plans designation were selected from more than 4,500 plans responding to PLANSPONSOR’s annual Defined Contribution (DC) Survey. 401(k) plans were evaluated and scored on more than 30 criteria related to plan design, oversight/governance, and participant outcomes.

Never miss a story — sign up for PLANSPONSOR newsletters to keep up on the latest retirement plan benefits news.

The 2015 Best in Class 401(k) Plans are:

Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield

Black & Veatch

BlackRock

Bohannan Huston, Inc.

Bristol-Myers Squibb Company

CliftonLarsonAllen LLP

The Cooper Companies

DENSO International America, Inc

Directed Account Plan

Essenita Health

FairPoint Communications

First National Bank Alaska

Francis Investment Counsel

Grange Mutual Casualty Company

Lancaster General Health

Land O’Lakes, Inc.

MasterCard

MDU Resources Group, Inc.

Motorola Solutions

National Futures Association

North Shore-LIJ Health System

Portland General Electric

Pitney Bowes

Providence Health & Services

Solix, Inc

TASC, Inc.

TD Ameritrade

TriMas Corporation

Westinghouse Electric Company LLC

The companies will be recognized in person at the 2015 PLANSPONSOR National Conference in Chicago, during a main stage panel session with a group of winners to discuss how they built a top defined contribution program, and have been invited to a dinner in their honor on June 3rd.

Plans were required to have certain features in order to be considered. Examples of mandatory criteria include but are not limited to:

  • above average participation rate,
  • use of auto escalation,
  • presence of an employer contribution of any type, and
  • oversight from an investment committee.

Plans were then scored based on a proprietary scoring method that rewards plan characteristics connected to driving better participant outcomes (i.e., plans that provide immediate vesting of employer contributions received more points than plans with three-year vesting schedules). Plans totaling more than 90 points (out of 100) were designated as 2015 Best in Class 401(k) Plans.

Nearly Half Don’t Save and May Never Save

Almost half (45%) of non-retired Americans are not saving for retirement, according to an Edward Jones retirement age survey.

What American investors say they will do and what they actually wind up doing to save for retirement shows a big gap, according to an Edward Jones retirement age survey.

Nearly half (45%) of non-retired Americans are not saving for retirement. Of those not yet saving, only 36% plan to do so in the future and nearly 10% say they never plan on saving for retirement.

Never miss a story — sign up for PLANSPONSOR newsletters to keep up on the latest retirement plan benefits news.

The study also found significant discrepancies by age among those who have not yet started saving. Although they plan to save in the future, the majority (58%) of the study’s youngest non-retired respondents (ages 18 to 34) have not yet started. 

One disconnect—between the expectations Americans have for retirement savings strategies and the reality of what they do—is striking, according to the survey findings. Almost all respondents ages 18 to 35 (90%) say they have started or plan to start saving for retirement before they turn or turned 30. Just 7% of that group plan to start saving for retirement in their 40s. 

The next age group—35- to 44-year-olds—revealed a significant increase in those who did start or planned to start saving for retirement in their 40s, with more than one-quarter (26%) saying so.

“While intentions to save for retirement are legitimate, individuals tend to satisfy more immediate, short-term spending goals and push off their long-term saving goals,” says Scott Thoma, principal and investment strategist for Edward Jones. “This behavior can be incredibly detrimental for individual investors, particularly as they enter the critical savings periods of their 30s and 40s when they have, and unfortunately waste, a tremendously valuable asset: time.” 

Nearly all (90%) of the study’s youngest respondents indicated they either plan to start or did begin saving in their 30s or earlier. However, only 64% of respondents ages 35 to 44 actually began saving in their 30s or earlier. 

Just 22% of overall respondents indicated that they plan to start or actually did begin saving between the ages of 40 and 50. However, when examining the plans versus reality among respondents ages 35 to 44 and 45 to 54, this percentage jumped, to 3% and 30%, respectively, indicating that intentions tend to fall short.

Household size and number of children also influences how people save. Households with at least one child are less likely to be saving for retirement (51%) than people who live alone (39%). Households with children that are saving (49%) are possibly facing other financial challenges than those without children (58%).
 

The survey of more than 1,000 non-retired and retired Americans was conducted by phone from February 12 to 15 by ORC International’s Telephone CARAVAN Omnibus on behalf of Edward Jones. Edward Jones provides financial services for individual investors in the United States and, through its affiliate, in Canada.

«