Headlines about "Ret plans - info for employees"

Gathered from the web by the editors at BenefitsLink.com.
401(k) Investment Education and Advice Provided by Organizations to Plan Participants
Excerpt: "Eighty-seven percent of organizations that offer 401(k) plans make investment education available to their plan participants. The top three formats for investment education are brochures, computer modeling or call centers through with employees can have their questions answered. In addition, 51% of organizations provide or make available some form of investment advice to plan participants." (Society for Human Resource Management)

The Obama Administration Wants to Nudge Retirees Toward Annuities: Here's What Is Available Now
Excerpt: "[M]any financial pros say annuities and related products can help reduce the risk you'll outlive your savings. For people interested in securing an income stream for life, here's a look at some available offerings . . . ." (The Wall Street Journal)

PSCA's 401(k) Day 2010
Excerpt: "PSCA's 2010 401(k) Day is an exceptional education campaign that will help plan sponsors and participants learn more about the benefits of saving for retirement in a 401(k) plan. Each component of the campaign features a series of valuable education and communication tools that can be customized with your own company name and logo." (Profit Sharing / 401k Council of America)

2010 University of Michigan Retirement Research Center Conference Papers
'Retirement, Planning, and Social Security in Interesting Times." (University of Michigan Retirement Research Center)

The Towers Watson Retirement Attitudes Survey (PDF)
6 pages. Excerpt: "The survey found that: More than half of employees across all ages report significant declines in their savings over the last two years. Employee confidence in having enough savings to live comfortably in retirement has recovered from February 2009 levels, but remains well below precrisis levels. While confidence is higher for those who participate in a defi ned benefit (DB) plan rather than a defined contribution (DC) plan, such as a 401(k), more younger employees are beginning to express concerns about their DB plans." (Towers Watson)

'When I'm 64' -- How Aging U.S. Baby Boomers Have Begun to Carry That Weight
Excerpt: "The trend toward delayed retirement could also be good news for the cognitive capacities of aging baby boomers. Cross-national data from 13 developed countries have shown a correlation between delayed retirement and the delayed onset of cognitive declines, with both delays being more characteristic of older Americans than of older Europeans." (RAND)

Trends in Workplace Retirement Education
Excerpt: "Plan sponsors want to make sure they are ahead of the curve with their retirement education programs rather than responding too late to major industry changes. To do so, they need to know the key trends in workplace retirement education and financial education." (401khelpcenter.com, LLC)

Women Want Retirement Education Improvement, According to Survey
Excerpt: "According to the news release, 57% want more information and advice from their employer on how to reach their retirement goals, and 40% cited 'a good starting point that is easy to understand' as something that would motivate them to learn more about retirement savings." (PLANSPONSOR.com)

When To Take Social Security? The 8% Solution
Excerpt: "For clients who are deciding when to start Social Security benefits, earning 8% a year by waiting can be appealing in these low-yield times." (Financial Planning)

[Opinion] Only Thing Worse Than Not Telling 401(k) Participants How Much to Save Is Offering Reckless Target Date Funds
Excerpt: "[T]he biggest problem with target date funds is that they mislead 401(k) participants into thinking that the most important component of retirement adequacy is the investments you choose when it's the actually the size of the contribution to retirement savings relative to income along with the investment time horizon." (Jane White of Retirement Solutions)

Retirees: Here's How to Game Social Security
Excerpt: "Hey, retirees: Looking for a way to bring in more money? Give back all the Social Security checks you have received so far. But you had better do it fast, since this loophole could soon close." (The Wall Street Journal)

Experts from Biggest Financial Companies Discuss Current Retirement Hurdles
Excerpt: "[The Roundtable experts] discussed issues including the harsh realities facing baby boomers, the financial needs of Gen X and Gen Y with their longer lead-in time to retirement, and the reason that distribution is still so hard after all these years. What matters most-lifestyle in retirement or meaningful community involvement? What's the measurement of a need versus a want? And is it really cool to be boring these days? (At least one panelist hopes so.)" (On Wall Street)

Public Administration and Education Employers Lead in Offering Retirement Seminars, According to Survey
Excerpt: "The findings can be found in MetLife's most recent Benefits Benchmarking Tool, which also reveals that 61% of employees in Public Administration and 54% of employees in Education have a formal retirement plan (compared to 47% of employees overall), and employees in both industry segments say that their retirement benefits are very important influencers of employee loyalty (85% of Public Administration employees and 72% of Education employees)." (PLANSPONSOR.com)

Advisors Look to Guaranteed Income Annuities to Help Fund Clients' Retirement
Excerpt: "According to the nation's leading branch managers, employee-sponsored plans and Individual Retirement Accounts are overwhelmingly the two largest sources of income for baby boomers at, or nearing, retirement." (On Wall Street)

Schwab 401(k) Survey Says Automatic Features, Advice Continue to Gain Ground
Excerpt: "According to data collected from 401(k) plans serviced by Schwab Retirement Plan Services, Inc. through the first half of 2010, nearly three-quarters (74%) of employers make 401(k) advice available to plan participants, as compared to 42% in 2005." (PLANSPONSOR.com)

Does the 4% Retirement Spending Rule Hold Up?
Excerpt: "Now, when economists hear about this '4% rule' for spending in retirement, they tend to cringe. (At least one well-known one has written an article explaining some reasons why.) One of the biggest issues they point out is, as the chart shows, that the '4% rule' in most cases tends to leave a lot of money unspent (at least over the 30-year horizon), and is hence potentially inefficient." (The Vanguard Group, Inc.)

Retirement Plan Participants Want More Help, According to 2nd Annual DC Participant Experience Study
Excerpt: "A new study finds that 60% of retirement plan participants want more personalized and effective communications, especially using current technologies such as Web sites, proactive e-mails, mobile, or on-demand videos." (PLANSPONSOR.com)

[Guidance Overview] IRS Memo Explains How Agency May Serve Tax Levies on Retirement Plans
Excerpt: "The IRS can serve two types of tax levies on a delinquent taxpayer's vested retirement benefits, an internal agency memo explains." (Mercer)

Companies Increasingly Requiring Employees to Make More Decisions Regarding Their Benefits and Assume Greater Financial Responsibility
Excerpt: "The recession coupled with the historic passage of federal healthcare reform is dramatically changing the way companies are handling employee benefits, according to preliminary findings of a survey of employers, employees, insurance brokers and consultants by Prudential Group Insurance." (Human Resource Executive Online)

How America Saves 2010: A Report on Vanguard 2009 DC Plan Data (PDF)
Excerpt: "This report . . . . found that many participants in 2009 experienced higher account balances, traded minimally in response to market volatility, increasingly diversified their assets through automatic investment programs, and protected their retirement nest egg when they left their employer." (The Vanguard Group, Inc.)

Appendix: Traditional IRA Investors' Contribution Activity, 2007 and 2008 (PDF)
58 pages. (Investment Company Institute)

The U.S. Retirement Market, First Quarter 2010 (PDF)
33 pages. Excerpt: "A separate report . . . shows that between December 2009 and March 2010, retirement assets rose 2.6 percent, from $16.1 trillion to $16.5 trillion. The report includes assets held in private-sector defined benefit (DB) plans, government pension plans, DC plans -- including 401(k), 403(b), and 457 plans -- annuities, and individual retirement accounts (IRAs)." (Investment Company Institute)

The Retirement Process
Excerpt: "For most people, retirement isn't a day, it's a process. . . . That has a lot of implications for the way you save and manage your money before, during, and after that transitional period. Here are some thoughts about the day you retire." (Reuters via The New York Times; free registration required)

Retirement Accounts More than a Third of U.S. Household Assets
Excerpt: "A report from the Investment Company Institute (ICI) finds Americans held $16.5 trillion in retirement assets at the end of the first quarter of 2010, accounting for 36% of all household financial assets in the United States." (PLANSPONSOR.com)

Merrill Lynch Advisor Finds Employer Interest in Retirement Plan Education Growing
Excerpt: "Bill Moran, a financial advisor in the D.C. office of Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, spoke to Capital Business about ways employers can help quell financial fears." (The Washington Post; free registration required)

Longevity Concerns High Among Retirement Savers
Excerpt: "Half of employees (52%) believe they are behind in their retirement savings and a nearly equal number of workers (53%) are very concerned about outliving their retirement money, according to MetLife's 8th Annual Employee Benefits Trends Study." (PLANSPONSOR.com)

Social Security Jitters? Better Prepare Now
Excerpt: "[E]ven if it's not clear yet what, if anything, will be done to Social Security and when, we thought it would be useful to look at a worst-case possibility -- to assume that benefits will not continue to be as generous. This is especially important as pensions continue to fade away." (New York Times; free registration required)

Should You Leave Your 401(k) Investments in Your Former Employer's Plan?
Excerpt: "[O]nly 3% of departing employees with accounts of less than $1,000 left their money in their former employers' plans, while nearly half of those with balances of $100,000 or more did so." (Wall Street Journal)

The EBRI Retirement Readiness Rating:? Retirement Income Preparation and Future Prospects
Excerpt: "The baseline 2010 Retirement Readiness Rating? finds that nearly one-half (47.2 percent) of the oldest cohort (Early Baby Boomers) are simulated to be 'at risk' of not having sufficient retirement resources to pay for 'basic' retirement expenditures and uninsured health care costs. The percentage 'at risk' drops for the Late Boomers (to 43.7 percent) . . . ." (Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI))

How Much Will I Need in My 401(k) Plan to Retire? (PDF)
A One-Page Estimator of Retirement Income and 401(k) Contributions. (Dennis Ackley)

Work and Retirement Patterns for the G.I. Generation, Silent Generation, and Early Boomers
Excerpt: "This study comparing retirement patterns over the past 30 years finds that older adults are now working longer and taking more complex routes out of the labor force." (Urban Institute)

[Opinion] PPA Anniversary Hits Unimagined Retirement Landscape
Excerpt: "Looking back to 2006, the retirement communications of the PPA era have taken on a museum-like quality. The images of the content from that time often show carefree baby boomers strolling on the beach or smiling as they imagine retirements within their grasp. Today, the lucky boomers are the ones who are still working." (PLANSPONSOR.com)

Adequate Benefit and Monthly Income for America's Workers
Excerpt: "Phyllis Borzi, the Department of Labor's Assistant Secretary for the Employee Benefits Security Administration, has said that 2010 is the year in which we begin a national dialogue about retirement income for 401(k) participants. As a practical matter, though, that national discussion involves several other issues: . . . ." (Reish & Reicher)

What Plan Sponsors Should Know About Stable Value Funds (PDF)
4 pages. Excerpt: "The purpose of this brochure is to provide plansponsors with a peek at the complexities and key issues surrounding SVFs while providing guidance for both monitoring and evaluating the funds and communicating these issues to participants." (National Association of Government Defined Contribution Administrators)

U.S. House Passes Resolution for National Save for Retirement Week in October
Excerpt: "Goals for National Save for Retirement Week: Make employees more aware of how critical it is to save now for their financial future; Promote the benefits of getting started saving for retirement today; Encourage employees to take full advantage of their employer-sponsored plans by increasing their contributions." (National Association of Government Defined Contribution Administrators)

Retirement Benefits a Top Factor in Keeping Affluent Employees Loyal
Excerpt: "The latest Merrill Lynch Affluent Insights Quarterly finds that, other than compensation and promotions, retirement benefits are the next greatest factor keeping affluent employees loyal to a company (60%)." (PLANSPONSOR.com)

Public Employees Get More Benefits Than Private-Sector Counterparts
Excerpt: "As of March, 88% of state and local government workers had access to employer-sponsored medical plans, compared with 71% of private-sector workers, according to a Labor Department report released Tuesday." (The Wall Street Journal)

How Reminders Increase Saving
Excerpt: "We develop and test a simple model of limited attention in intertemporal choice. The model posits that individuals fully attend to consumption in all periods but fail to attend to some future lumpy expenditure opportunities." (National Bureau of Economic Research; paid subscription or individual purchase required to retrieve fulltext)

[Official Guidance] Text of Proposed PBGC Regs Strengthening and Expanding Debt Collection Methods (PDF)
Excerpt: "This proposed rule would revise the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation's regulation on debt collection to conform to the Debt Collection Improvement Act of 1996, the Federal Claims Collection Standards and other legal requirements applicable to the collection of non-tax debts owed to PBGC. This proposed rule would add salary offset and administrative wage garnishment to the collection methods allowed under the current regulation and make other changes to strengthen PBGC's debt collection program." (Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation)

A Report on Vanguard 2009 Defined Contribution Plan Data (PDF)
84 pages. Excerpt: "Overall, aggregate savings statistics have weakenedmodestly during the recent market volatility, but there has been a marked increase in participation rates among lower-income, younger, and newly hired employees -- again attributable to automatic enrollment." (The Vanguard Group, Inc.)

Value of Retirement Benefits See Double Digit Decline over Decade, According to Analysis
Excerpt: "The analysis found that, from 1998 to 2008, the value of total retirement benefits provided to new, salaried employees in the eight industries studied declined by 19%, from 7.88% to 6.36% of pay. Total retirement benefits include DB and DC plans, retiree medical and retiree life insurance plans, according to a press release." (PLANSPONSOR.com)

Using Behavioral Finance to Help Employees Achieve Their Retirement Goals (PDF)
19 pages. Excerpt: "A number of challenges contribute to [the] retirement saving deficit, but progress has been made with new programs and tools that use insights gained from behavioral science and psychology about plan participants' behaviors." (Standard Retirement Services, Inc.)

401(k) Participants Get More Positive, According to Survey
Excerpt: "More employees eligible for 401(k) plans took 'positive' action in the first half of this year than a year earlier, according to a survey by Bank of America Merrill Lynch's Retirement and Benefit Plan Services unit." (Pensions & Investments; registration may be required)

Financial Literacy: Implications for Retirement Security and the Financial Marketplace
Excerpt: "Leading academics, pension sponsors, and their advisors met recently to measure and remedy low levels of financial literacy in the United States and around the world at the 2010 Wharton Impact Conference sponsored by the Pension Research Council and the Boettner Center for Pensions and Retirement Research. Here we summarize the proceedings from this event . . . ." (Pension Research Council; registration required to download working papers)

National Compensation Survey: Health and Retirement Plan Provisions in Private Industry in the United States, 2009 (PDF)
135 pages. Excerpt: "This bulletin of detailed health and retirement provisions will begin including basic health, defined benefit, anddefined contribution tables each year. In addition, each year additional tables for a specific benefit will also be included. For example, this year additional defined contribution retirement tables in private industry are included." (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)

How Much Should You Have in Equities Until Retirement?
Excerpt: "A new analysis shows that even those who pursue a more conservative investment strategy to avoid large losses at retirement -- with the intention of cashing out their assets soon after retiring to, say, buy an annuity -- might not do as well as those with a more aggressive strategy." (American Association of Individual Investors)

6 Steps for a Retirement Plan Review
Excerpt: "Updating your plan is a bit like double checking your answers on a math test. We know it helps, but most of us don't do it. Here is how to find out if your retirement investments are on track." (U.S. News & World Report)

New BLS Data Series Highlights Employee Access to Medical Care and Retirement Benefits (PDF)
4 pages. Excerpt: "Data on access to medical care and retirement have been available separately in the past, but 2009 is the first time that the percent of employees that have both or neither benefits have been published." (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)

The EBRI Retirement Readiness Rating:? Retirement Income Preparation and Future Prospects (PDF)
36 pages. Excerpt: "While knowing the percentage of households that are 'at risk' is obviously valuable, it does nothing to inform one of how much additional savings is required to achieve the desired probability of success. Therefore, this analysis also models how much additional savings would need to be contributed from 2010 until age 65 to achieve adequate retirement income 50, 70, and 90 percent of the time for each household." (Employee Benefit Research Institute)

Income in Retirement: Common Investment Strategies (PDF)
12 pages. Excerpt: "This paper describes several basic strategies forgenerating and managing income in retirement. We review some commonapproaches, including income investing, total-return-based spending, and the use of insurance-based products such as income annuities." (The Vanguard Group, Inc.)

Retirement in a Life Cycle Model of Labor Supply with Home Production
Excerpt: "We analyze the forces that can generate retirement in different versions of standard life cycle models of labor supply." (University of Michigan Retirement Research Center)

Retirement Requires More Preparation Nowadays
Excerpt: "'What most people don't appreciate is that the future is likely to bring a unique confluence of events that will challenge us for many years: de-leveraging, deflation, high unemployment, severe deficits on the local, state and federal levels,' . . . ." (The Dallas Morning News)

SEC Proposed Regs Would Require Target Date Retirement Funds to Disclose Asset Allocations
Excerpt: "The Securities and Exchange Commission . . . has issued proposed regulations that would require a target date retirement fund that includes the target date in its name to disclose the fund's asset allocation at the target date immediately adjacent to the first use of the fund's name in marketing materials." (Wolters Kluwer)

Fees, Framing, and Financial Literacy in the Choice of Pension Manager
Excerpt: "A growing literature shows how consumers make mistakes in a variety of different settings pertinent to financial decision-making. Using data from a randomized experiment in Chile, we show how different ways of presenting pension management fees shape consumer choices, and how responses to pension fee information varies by level of financial literacy." (Pension Research Council; registration required to download working papers)

National Compensation Survey: Occupational Earnings in the United States, 2009
Excerpt: "The National Compensation Survey . . . provides comprehensive measures of occupational earnings, compensation cost trends, the incidence of benefits, and detailed benefit provisions." (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)

[Opinion] Suggested Changes to 'Thinking of Retiring' Special Insert for Workers 55 or Older (PDF)
9 pages. Excerpt: "This document suggests changes to current Social Security publications, specifically the 'Thinking of retiring?' special insert to the annual Social Security Statement for workers 55 or older and the 'When to Start Receiving Retirement Benefits' publication . . . ." (American Academy of Actuaries)

Social Media Won't Work for Benefits Information, According to Survey
Excerpt: "[A]bout three-fourths of workers said they were not interested in receiving information via Facebook about their employer-sponsored health benefits, tips on improving their health or saving money on health care." (Business Insurance)

Poll: Running Out of Money In Retirement Is Worse Than Death
Excerpt: "In a new poll of people ages 44 to 75, more than three in five (61 percent) said they fear depleting their assets more than they fear dying." (AARP)

U.S. Supreme Court to Consider Remedy for Deficient SPD
Excerpt: "To recover benefits based on an inconsistency between an ERISA plan document and summary plan description (SPD), must participants show reliance on the SPD? Is it sufficient to show 'likely harm'? Or can participants prevail without any showing of harm? The US Supreme Court will tackle these questions . . . ." (Mercer)

[Guidance Overview] Second Circuit Holds That Retirees??? State Law Claims Against Investment Advisor Are Preempted by Federal Law
Excerpt: "[This] alert addresses a recent decision . . . in which the Court held that the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act of 1998 precluded two state court actions filed by retirees who were allegedly misled into retiring after having been given deceptive financial projections by their former financial advisors." (Nixon Peabody LLP)

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