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Participants Back Bigger ‘Nudges’

Plan sponsors are often reluctant to take big steps in making plan changes — but a new participant survey finds that workers would welcome more aggressive defaults.

According to a national survey conducted by American Century Investments:

  • Eight out of 10 employees want at least a “slight nudge” from their employers in helping to save and invest for retirement.

  • Seventy percent believe that their employer should institute automatically enrollment and set the contribution rate at 6%.

  • Seven in 10 show at least some interest in a regular, incremental automatic increase.

  • Seventy percent support plan investment re-enrollment into target-date solutions.

  • More than half contend that automatic enrollment should be implemented retroactively.

Additional findings:

  • More than 80% of participants view a defined contribution plan as one of their most important benefits.

  • More than 8 out of 10 participants strongly agree that their employer offering a retirement plan makes them feel better about working there.

  • Eight out of 10 participants would prefer a 100% company match on their retirement contribution up to 3%, rather than a 3% salary increase — and three-fourths of those surveyed feel the same even when the figure is raised to 6%.

  • Roughly two-thirds of employees would choose to work for a company offering a retirement plan over one that does not, even if a competing company offered a 5% higher salary.

  • Despite giving themselves a ‘C’ grade on saving and a ‘C+’ on investing for retirement, participants gave the help offered by their employers a ‘B-’.

  • Looking back, participants’ single biggest regret is not saving enough for retirement.

The survey was conducted during the first quarter of 2016 among a total of 1,504 full-time workers between ages 25 and 65, participating in their employer’s retirement plan, intending to retire at some point, and not working for the government.