DC Participants Stay the Course with Saving and Investing

Defined contribution (DC) retirement plan participants remain committed to saving, the Investment Company Institute (ICI) found through its analysis of plan recordkeeping data covering more than 26 million participants.

In the first half of the year, only 1.8% stopped contributing to their DC plans, compared with 2.1% in the first half of 2014.

Participants also stayed the course with their asset allocations. Only 6.6% changed the asset allocation of their account balances, the same as in the first half of 2014. Only 6% changed the asset allocation of their contributions, up slightly from 5.1% in the first half of 2014.

Only 2.2% of participants took withdrawals in the first half of 2015, compared with 2.3% in the first half of 2014, and only 0.9% took hardship withdrawals in the first six months of this year, the same as in comparable periods in the past three years.

Historically, the share of participants with loans tends to increase after the first quarter of each year, ICI said. However, at the end of June 2015, 17.5% of DC plan participants had loans outstanding, compared with 17.4% at the end of March 2015.

The full ICI report can be downloaded here.