Is automatic enrollment the future of retirement savings?

A bold plan in California would eventually make automatic enrollment widespread and could revolutionize the state’s retirement savings landscape, Harris writes.

|
Lucy Nicholson/Reuters/File
A man swims his daily mile at a retirement community in Sun City, Ariz. Evidence suggests that if California's automatic enrollment plan ever becomes policy, it will go a long towards increasing retirement saving, Harris writes.

Automatic enrollment is slowly gaining steam as the choice strategy to encourage retirement saving.  A bold plan in California would eventually make the practice widespread and could revolutionize the state’s saving landscape.

Last September, the California legislature approved a framework for automatically enrolling private-sector workers in a retirement savings plan.  Employers with more than five workers would have to offer a workplace retirement plan, automatically enroll employees in the newly established California Secure Choice Retirement Savings Plan (SCP), or face a fine. Workers enrolled in SCP would automatically contribute 3 percent of their pay to an IRA-like account unless they opted out; like an IRA, benefits would be based on account contributions and investment returns. Employers are only required to set up the plan, not to contribute to the account, and there is no explicit cost to taxpayers.

A third-party—either a private firm or California’s pension administrator (CALPERS)—would administer the plan, investing no more than half the pooled funds in equities. (A private administrator may be the superior option given CALPERS’ recent history of fraud and mismanagement.) Annual administrative expenses would be limited to one percent of fund assets. The framework also calls for a guaranteed return, although the details have yet to be ironed out.

The plan is a long way from becoming a reality. The framework calls for further study of the plan’s feasibility and costs, and additional legislation will be needed to turn the idea into policy. In addition, the IRS and Department of Labor must still rule on the legality of some of the details. 

Nonetheless, California’s plan shows exceptional promise. By utilizing automatic enrollment, which has been proven to bolster enrollment in private 401(k) plans, the plan could bring more than 6 million workers into the retirement saving universe. It takes advantage of a pooled investment strategy to lower administrative costs and ensure a balanced investment portfolio. The benefits would be progressively distributed. Workers take the accounts with them if they switch jobs. The plan is entirely self-funded with no extra cost to taxpayers. And it’s entirely voluntary; workers who do not want to contribute may opt out.

But there’s one big drawback: the guaranteed return purchased from private firms. Guaranteed returns would be great if they were free, but they’re not. Workers would have to pay private firms to guarantee the investment return, which would increase investment fees, possibly a lot. The structure of the guarantee dictates the price. Guarantees that exclusively protect against steep losses or those that “collar” the return (i.e., impose a minimum and maximum return) are less expensive. Guarantees that ensure at least a modest return are pricey. One analysis put the cost of a guaranteed 2 percent real rate of return at 29 percent of contributions.

An important new study reinforces the benefits of automatic enrollment. In a sample of Danish workers, researchers at Harvard and the University of Copenhagen found that approximately 85 percent of retirement savers are “passive” savers. Passive savers don’t respond to price subsidies like tax benefits, but will save more if automatically enrolled in a savings account. Importantly, the researchers found that under a system without automatic enrollment, 98 percent of contributions to existing retirement accounts were simply offsets to other types of saving—a finding that casts doubt on the billions of dollars in tax expenditures now devoted to encouraging retirement saving.

California’s plan faces several hurdles before enactment. But the evidence suggests that if it ever becomes policy, the plan will go a long towards increasing retirement saving.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Is automatic enrollment the future of retirement savings?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Tax-VOX/2013/0322/Is-automatic-enrollment-the-future-of-retirement-savings
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe