Kyowa Kirin, Inc.

Pharmaceutical company Kyowa Kirin Inc.’s North American team works on drug discovery, development and commercialization with the goal of helping people with some of the world’s hardest-to-treat diseases. They take the wellness of their employees with equal seriousness, working toward a retirement plan that will give them the best chance of security when they are done with work.

“Retirement security and the overall financial wellness of our employees are top priorities for our organization,” says Britt Byers, Kyowa Kirin’s senior vice president of human resources in North America. “While our workforce remains focused on developing pharmaceutical breakthroughs to enhance life, our firm wants to help our employees achieve financial security for their future. We are proud of our results so far, but we recognize there is more that can be done.”

The Bedminster, New Jersey-based division of Kyowa Kirin took a step toward providing the best retirement plan possible in 2014 by hiring a fiduciary adviser, CAPTRUST, and moving to recordkeeper Fidelity Investments.

“This two-step process enabled us to begin exploring a variety of ideas to enhance our program,” Byers says. In time, working with these organizations led the firm to reduce vesting time in the plan (employees now become eligible after just one month of service) and to add automatic enrollment and automatic escalation up to 10%. 

“These improvements were made after careful evaluations, year after year,” Byers says. “We took small steps and, as we kept experiencing success, we moved one step further.”

But a strong plan is not enough, according to Byers, who says with employees located across the U.S., they have worked to put in place a communications program that is both widespread and personalized.

“We needed a program that provides ongoing communications that can adjust as our employees’ situations changed,” she says. “Our employee population utilizes a wealth of tools to improve their financial wellness, including digital and live/virtual education tools and planning; phone interactions; webinars; and visiting investor centers.”

Workers are not the only ones being educated on 401(k) saving best practices. Kyowa Kirin’s plan committee holds quarterly plan financial updates regarding fund performance and choices and gets fiduciary training from its CAPTRUST advisory firm. 

The plan committee has also been laser-focused on working with its providers to keep plan and investment fees low in order to maximize employee savings. The firm says current plan fees are 0.32%, a relatively low figure when compared to industry averages.

“Our approach is simple: We recognize that the more money our employees pay in fees, the less they will have at retirement,” Byers says. “Our job is to ensure our employees pay as little as possible while not compromising returns, service and ongoing support.”

Overall, results of the firm’s efforts have led to 85 employees making catch-up contributions and to average employee savings balances of $108,215.

“Every action we take is with the focus on what is in our employees’ best interest,” Byers says. “Whether this is focused on plan design, fund selection, fee management or financial wellness, we want to have a strong retirement program so our employees have a secure financial future.”

—Alex Ortolani