Benefits March 16, 2011

Most Plan Sponsors Staying Away from Auto Enroll in 2011

March 16, 2011 (PLANSPONSOR.com) – While the percentage of plan sponsors in a new study providing automatic enrollment increased slightly from 39% in 2009 to 45% in 2010, 55% said they are still not planning to adopt automatic enrollment in 2011.
Reported by

According to the study by Grant Thornton LLP, Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP, and Plan Sponsor Advisors LLC, 33% of respondents reported that they will be offering automatic enrollment with an employer match in 2011 while 9% said they are providing no match with the automatic enrollment feature.  Thirteen percent of plan sponsors responded that they are also including an automatic increase in default deferral rates in their automatic enrollment feature.

In addition, the study found 58% of plan sponsors are not considering a Roth feature in their plan. Twenty-eight percent of plan sponsors who indicated that Roth features are being added to their plans in 2010–11 indicated that regulatory updates involving “in-plan Roth rollovers” contributed to the decision.

Meanwhile, 9% of plan sponsors surveyed are considering the addition of a retirement income solution to provide an ongoing payment stream option for employees. Of the 9%, the response was split almost equally between an in-plan (52%) and out-of-plan (48%) solution.

The study report is at http://www.grantthornton.com/staticfiles/GTCom/Grant%20Thornton%20Thinking/Surveys/2011_Retirement-Survey_FINAL.pdf.

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