Many employers are skeptical about whether workers want more retirement planning information, and many are afraid to offer plan participants investment advice.
Researchers at Transamerica Retirement Services, Los Angeles, have published figures supporting those conclusions in a summary of results from a 2006 survey of 659 business owners and other benefits decisionmakers and a related survey of 1,402 U.S. workers ages 18 and older who work for private, for-profit employers with 10 or more employees.
President Bush recently signed the Pension Protection Act of 2006, which is supposed to encourage employers to offer retirement plan members investment advice.
At companies with retirement plan members, about 51% of the benefits managers said their companies already offer participants investment advice, and 47% of the benefits managers said their companies do not offer advice, Transamerica researchers report.
Only 8% of the plan sponsors without advice programs now plan to add advice programs, and 56% of sponsors resisting advice programs cite “potential liability” as a concern.
Potential liability was the most commonly cited concern, and no other concern was mentioned by more than 9% of the benefits managers surveyed.