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Administration January 2, 2003
Top 100 Plans Credit Match with Success
February 13, 2002 (PLANSPONSOR.com)- Plan sponsors
looking to overcome dismal participation rates may find a
solution close at hand - the company match.
Reported by Nevin E. Adams
In fact, 94% of PLANSPONSOR’s Top 100 Defined Contribution plans offer some form of company matching contribution – and 55% credit a rich company match with their high participation rate, 88% on average.
That’s considerably better than the 75% average participation rate in PLANSPONSOR’s 2001 DC survey, published last November, from which the Top 100 were drawn.
Plan sponsors on a budget do have alternatives. Other reasons cited for high participation by the Top 100 were:
- communication/education efforts, listed by 48%,
- attractive plan features such as immediate vesting and Internet access, cited by 31%,
- a well-educated or mature workforce was mentioned by 22%, and
- having auto-enrollment in place was listed by 15%
And while the match was the most commonly cited reason, 62%
of the employers in the Top 100 also offered access to
company stock as a match or an investment option for
employees.
On average, the firms offered 15 investment options to participants, though the number of options did not appear to have a determinative impact on the level of participation.
This year’s Top 100 plans represent a total of more than $151 billion in defined contribution assets and more than 1.7 million participants.
To be included in the Top 100 a plan had to have a minimum participation rate of 80% in the defined contribution plan, and a minimum of $100 million in plan assets.