Grading the Performance of Your Company’s Retirement Plan
Imagine giving your company’s retirement plan a report card. Would it earn straight A’s in preparing your participants for their golden years? Or is it more of a C student who could really use some extra help after school? Bench-marking can tell you.
Mind the basics
More than likely, you already use certain criteria to benchmark your plan’s performance using traditional measures such as:
- Fund investment performance relative to a peer group,
- Breadth of fund options,
- Bench-marked fees, and
- Participation rates and average deferral rates (including matching contributions).
These measures are all critical, but they’re only the beginning of the story. Add to that list helpful administrative features and functionality — including auto-enrollment and auto-escalation provisions, investment education, retirement planning, and forecasting tools. In general, the more, the better.
Don’t overlook useful data
A sometimes-overlooked plan metric is average account balance size. This matters for two reasons. First, it provides a first-pass look at whether participants are accumulating meaningful sums in their accounts. Naturally, you’ll need to look at that number in light of the age of your workforce and how long your plan has been in existence. Second, it affects record-keeping fees — higher […]