PLANSPONSOR - June/July 2018 - 7

Survey Says
Helpful
But
Underused
Plan
Features
D
ata show that the majority of
retirement plan sponsors have
implemented best practices for
their retirement programs. But there are
some underutilized features that could,
relatively easily, help boost participant
outcomes.
We asked NewsDash readers to put
their plan participant " hat " on and, from
the list of retirement program features
and other benefits we have observed to be
underutilized, choose the one that would
help them the most in reaching their
retirement savings goal.
From our list, the feature or benefit
identified as potentially most helpful
was automatic escalation of deferral rate,
cited by 39.4% of responding readers.
This was followed closely by a stretched
match formula, selected by 33.3%.
More than one-quarter (27.3%) selected
personalized retirement communications,
while 21.2% chose a student loan
repayment benefit.
Nearly six in 10 (58.8%) respondents
work in a plan sponsor role, while 32.3%
are third-party administrators (TPAs)/
recordkeepers/investment managers, and
8.8% are advisers/consultants. As always,
all verbatim responses reflect the opinions
of individual readers and not the stance
of PLANSPONSOR or its affiliates at
Strategic Insight.
" Another feature that would greatly
help is if our company had a defined benefit
[DB] plan, in addition to our 401(k) plan. "
" We have one extremely 'anti-autoanything'
on our plan committee, which sets
us back. We won the auto-enrollment fight
years ago but can't convince him to approve
a default deferral rate of 6%. "
" Generally speaking, 'underutilized'
program features are underutilized because a)
they are expensive, and/or b) they are underutilized
by workers. And there are few things
more aggravating than expensive, underutilized
retirement program features ... "
" Put in place a new employee autoenrollment
voluntary retirement savings
plan that auto-escalates using 60% of each
pay raise until the IRS [Internal Revenue
Service] max is reached. "
" HSAs provide great tax treatment and
could provide a nice balance for retirement if
one is fortunate in [his] family's health and
wise in health care spending. This requirement
limits success. "
" I'm not impacted by student loans
Art by Julianna Brion
personally, but I recognize the need for help
in this area among my younger co-workers.
I am interested in hearing what other plan
sponsors are doing in this area as well as
what legislation is being proposed to help our
student debt-burdened population. "
" One not mentioned was personal
financial wellness. Our company does not
have it, but it would certainly have helped
our family. "
" People just need to save for retirement
from the beginning of employment. If we
can get them to do that, we wouldn't have to
worry about underutilization. "
And the Editor's Choice goes to
the reader who said: " I would love to see
auto-escalation tied in with timing of wage
increases. Timing with raises would make it
painless, as more money would go to retirement
at the same time more money goes into
your pocket. " -Rebecca Moore
You can participate by subscribing to
NewsDash at plansponsor.com/subscribe.
PLANSPONSOR.com June-July 2018 7

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PLANSPONSOR - June/July 2018

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