City of Columbia

FINALIST

Matthew Lue
Director of Finance

Location:

Columbia, Missouri
Industry:

Government
Plans Offered:

457, 401(a), defined benefit
Plan Assets:

$30M 401(a), $95.4M 457
Number of Participants:

980 active
DC Plan Participation Rate:

70%
DC Plan Average Deferral Rate:

5%
Automatic Enrollment:

No
Automatic Escalation:

No
Default Deferral Rate for Auto-Enrollment:

2%
Name of Default Investment Fund:

Fidelity Freedom Index, T. Rowe Price Retirement Fund
Employer Contribution:

2% match
Recordkeeper:

Nationwide (457), Mission Square (457), Empower (401(a))
Plan Adviser:

Nationwide (457), Mission Square (457), Empower (401(a))
Financial Wellness Educators:

Nationwide, Mission Square

NOMINATOR COMMENTS

The City of Columbia should be recognized as an early adopter of innovative solutions that provide participants with a more secure retirement. Its holistic approach ensures that current and prospective participants have access to a plan that automatically helps them create and protect a stream of lifetime income. The city didn’t stop at that. It partnered with Nationwide to share its story to inspire action in the industry, in hopes that widespread adoption will help close the retirement income gap for participants across the country.

PLANSPONSOR: Please cite any noteworthy initiatives you have taken in the past 24 to 36 months that have produced results to improve your plan, and describe the results.

City of Columbia: We recognized the following challenges among our workforce:

Varied employee tenure, which can impact the amount of pension benefits available to a participant;
Retirement income shortfalls, as Social Security replaces only 40% of pre-retirement earnings, on average; and
Lack of retirement confidence, as participants recognized that guaranteed income would drive a sense of greater financial comfort.

To address these concerns, we partnered with our recordkeeper to make the following plan enhancements:

Added an in-plan lifetime income solution to shift the plan focus from only savings to a true retirement plan;
Set this solution as the plan’s dynamic default fund for older workers, so younger participants would be automatically transitioned to the lifetime income fund around age 50; and
Reallocated participants older than 50 into the target-date fund, so they could immediately benefit from the plan’s enhanced fund lineup.

From mid-2024, this has already resulted in $5 million in assets that will offer income security.

PLANSPONSOR: Is there anything else you would like to share?

City of Columbia: We have increased the frequency of [employee] meetings with Nationwide representatives and financial advisers.

This year, for our Plan Sponsor of the Year profiles, we are publishing Q&As based on the finalists’ applications and nominator comments. Responses are edited and may be paraphrased. In cases where the finalist self-nominated or, on its application, referred judges to the nomination for the answer, we have attributed those nominator answers to the plan sponsor.

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