Just as defined contribution (DC) plan sponsors were once concerned about automatically enrolling employees in the plan when they didn’t actively select it, they have hesitations about using qualified default investment alternatives (QDIAs) that automatically place participants in a managed account.
Setting defaults too low, choosing the wrong default investment and offering company stock as an investment option could result in unintended consequences, BlackRock found.
“The world is moving toward big data, and thus far as an industry we haven’t been able to use big data in a meaningful way. We are now in the midst of a paradigm shift that will allow plan sponsors to make data-driven decisions in an entirely new way,” says Thomas Idzorek, with Morningstar Investment Management.