2026 PS Webinar: Benchmarking Your Plan—Using Data to Stay Competitive

Benchmarking insights empower employers to identify costs, enhance overall plan features and ensure that participants are both engaged with their plans and ready to retire, said one of the panelists at PLANSPONSOR’s recent “Benchmarking Your Plan: Using Data to Stay Competitive” webinar.

The session considered some of the information available via PLANSPONSOR’s 2025 Defined Contribution Survey, which was based on responses from a record 4,387 plan sponsors from more than 50 different industries. The survey is the basis for PLANSPONSOR’s 2026 Plan Benchmarking Report that shares detailed information about U.S. defined contribution retirement plans.

Panelists speaking at the January 28 event discussed how benchmarking drives smarter plan design decisions, improving plan competitiveness and employee outcomes.

A recording of the full webinar is available here.

‘An Essential Practice’

“Retirement benchmarking is an essential practice for plan sponsors who are committed to delivering optimal outcomes for their participants, as well as fulfilling their fiduciary responsibilities,” said Kathleen Kelly, a founding and managing partner in Compass Financial Partners, a division of MMA Securities LLC. “Benchmarking provides a clear and data-driven view of how a plan’s fees, plan design, overall participation [and] investment options compare to industry standards, as well as peer organizations.”

Kelly explained that benchmarking helps empower organizations regarding the costs of their plan; enhance overall plan features; and ensure that participants are engaged with their plans and prepared to retire when the time comes. She said “effective” benchmarking not only helps control expenses and mitigates risk, but also strengthens the overall value proposition of the retirement plan.

Steve Luyckx, general manager and president of automotive finance and technology company Open Dealer Exchange, says his company benchmarks to keep its benefits competitive, as it sits in the heart of the Detroit automotive industry.

“If you want to gain top talent, you have to offer [employees] at least equal, if not better” benefits than the others, Luyckx said. “Since [we’re] not a well-known name, ours need to be even better.”

Jamie Curcio, a principal in benefits advisory firm Curcio Webb, added that some of her clients tap into benchmarking to defend against threats of litigation. She said that some clients are required, as conditions of previous lawsuits, to take their plan services out to bid every few years.

Identifying the Guiding Principles

Each time Compass Financial Partners begins a new client engagement, it helps the client identify its plan goals and philosophies. Kelly said she has found most plan sponsor committees have never gone through the process of identifying their guiding principles but can benefit greatly from learning their plans’ relative strengths and weaknesses.

A plan sponsor might be able to address issues of leakage or low participation within their specific plans, for instance, according to Kelly. For some issues, the plan sponsor could even choose a recordkeeper whose services are optimized for addressing that exact concern, perhaps by leveraging the recordkeeper’s live webinars or on-site meetings.

Benchmarking is “more of an art than a science,” Curcio said earlier in the session.

In addition, recordkeeper requests for proposal are “definitely more art than science,” Kelly said.

Fee Considerations

The larger the plan, the lower the fees, explained Amy Resnick, the event moderator and executive editor of PLANSPONSOR digital. In this year’s PLANSPONSOR DC survey, about half of respondents in the smallest plans—those with plan assets of $5 million or less—reported paying an average asset-weighted expense ratio of more than 50 basis points on all investment options in their plans. Meanwhile, 62.4% of respondents with more than $1 billion in assets reported paying fees of less than 25 bps.

Kelly said it is important to compare all services received by a plan’s participants with the total cost and not to consider fees in a vacuum.

“Products and services that help your participants retire earlier or be in a better financial situation are worth more,” Kelly said. “The DOL says you can assess the quality of service providers when assessing fee reasonableness.”

Employers must “ensure that fees paid to service providers and other plan expenses are reasonable in light of the level and quality of services provided,” according to the Employee Benefits Security Administration’s “A Look at 401(k) Plan Fees.” Kelly recommended all employers review the publication as they make plan decisions.

“Fewer or more services—or complexity—is not necessarily good or bad,” Kelly said. “However, they should be aligned with your overall plan objectives and business objectives in delivering outcomes for participants.”

Employer Matches

The panelists said employer matches are employee benefits that firms frequently benchmark. Kelly said she helps her clients develop a “heat map” that allows them to see how the matches they offer their employees compare to those of their competitors. Green dots indicate the most generous matches, yellow dots show the moderately rewarding, and red dots demonstrate the lowest matches. Kelly plots a dot for her client to show where it sits.

“The employer match spend is so much smaller than what an employer spends on their employee benefits that an incremental increase in the match in a 401(k) plan can go a long way,” Kelly said. She explained that employers might “get a lot of bang for their buck” from a higher employer match because participants see the money directly in their account, driving loyalty and good morale.

Luyckx recommended plan sponsors communicate to their participants how the match works in simple terms—by “putting a dollar on it.”

Tell participants, “‘There’s nothing in it for the company [monetarily],’” Luyckx explained.  “‘We hope to have you as an employee for the rest of your career.’”

Looking Ahead to Financial Wellness

The panelists said they expect financial wellness benefits to be benchmarked more closely in the years ahead.

Curcio said some of her clients have stated specific objectives like wanting to reduce the incidence of plan loans in populations of their employee base that have been more prone to borrow. She asks her clients, “‘Do you have a method to get individuals help in the areas in which they need it?’”

“Financial wellness is a big part of where we focus as well, and that takes on so many different forms,” Kelly added. “How do you help employees put all the [financial] pieces together?”

Kelly said emergency savings has become a big concern among low-to-moderate-income workers. She anticipates key industry players using benchmarking data to compare and understand emergency savings offerings in the future.

A lack of emergency savings “prevents participants from being able to maximize all the great things we’ve been talking about today,” Kelly said. “All of those things get derailed when unexpected expenses arise. A participant has to make choices.”