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April 24, 2013 at 08:40 AM
To use a football analogy, workers must go long and deep in their defined contribution (DC) plans. In other words, they need to throw more dollars into those plans and for longer periods. That was one of the takeaways from a briefing held yesterday in New York City on retirement trends in the corporate defined contribution plan space sponsored by Prudential.
The discussion focused on how companies can work with plan sponsors and consultants to optimize defined contribution plans and encourage more worker engagement as more companies shift from pensions, or defined benefit (DB) plans, to DC programs. According to a study by Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, of the roughly 50 percent of private sector workers with access to any type of workplace retirement plan, the percentage covered by a DB plan has declined from 83 percent in 1980 to 31 percent in 2008.
See: How (and why) to bring better retirement planning to the worksite
Mark R. Wetzel, president of Fiduciary Investment Advisors LLC, said that auto-enrolling plan participants at a 3 percent contribution rate gave workers “a false sense of security.” What’s needed, he continued, is to start at a higher rate of say, 6 percent and then increase that to 10 percent. “Few and far between have saved enough,” he said.
Wetzel’s colleague, Chris Rowlins, senior consultant at Fiduciary Investment Advisors, added that when the auto-enrollment rate for contributions went up, there was not a wave of opt-outs. “That’s a good sign,” he said.
However, Barbara Delaney, principal of Stone Street Equity, cautioned that getting minimum-wage workers to contribute more is a challenge.
The need for an income product, like an annuity, in DC plans was further noted by the panelists. There is a certainly a place for guaranteed income products in such plans – once they are institutionally priced, Delaney said.
