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OregonSaves Second Wave Nears

The next wave of OregonSaves registrations is on the horizon.

Employers with 50-99 employees in Oregon will need to either register to facilitate OregonSaves or certify that they are exempt from the program by May 15, 2018.

While the program says that many have already registered or claimed exemption, those that haven’t should expect to receive notice on or about April 15, 2018 from OregonSaves about the deadline. The notice will include a link to the website and a unique access code they will need to complete the registration or certification process online.

For employers with an email address on file, the notice will be sent by email. For all others, it will be sent by regular mail. If an employer doesn’t receive the notice and should have, they can reach out to the OregonSaves client services team at (844) 661-1256 or [email protected].

As of April 2, 2018, 493 employers have registered to facilitate OregonSaves for their employees, including 264 that the program says have joined early. Just over three-quarters (77.6%) of the 37,676 eligible employees have enrolled in the program – suggesting that roughly one in five (22%) have opted out. As of March 1, 362 employers had registered to facilitate OregonSaves for their employees. Wave 1 opened in October for employers with more than 100 employees.

The OregonSaves program auto-enrolls participants at 5%, while the typical private sector auto-enrollment program still starts at 3% (though surveys suggest a movement to higher defaults) with an auto-escalation provision to 10%. The post-tax deferrals are defaulted into a capital preservation fund for the first $1,000 and then into a target-date framework. Fees for participants are capped at about 1% annually.

OregonSaves was the first of the state-run retirement IRA programs for private sector workers to come online. On average, employees are contributing about $100 per month, and assets in the program now exceed $1.8 million.