A new study from American Century suggests sponsors may be speaking out of both sides the their mouths.

Overwhelmingly, sponsors say it is very important to support participants’ quest for a secure retirement. Of the nearly 500 sponsors American Century surveyed—none had more than $250 million in plan value—91 percent say they are conscious of employees’ retirement readiness.

Yet only 36 percent of sponsors said they actually test their plan for retirement readiness.

For the most part, sponsors are confident they are doing a “reasonable” job when it comes to optimizing plan design—89 percent gave themselves a passing grade.

But that general confidence may not square with participants’ expectations.

American Century’s study, which was conducted last year but just released, shows that seven in 10 participants think sponsors should be automatically enrolling them at a deferral rate of 6 percent. Yet only 48 percent of the sponsors polled have any automatic-enrollment plan in place.

Moreover, 70 percent of the more than 2,000 participants surveyed said they were at least “fairly interested” in an annual automatic-escalation of 1 percent. That suggests employees are open to a more paternalistic approach to prepping for retirement. If that is the case, sponsors have yet to get the memo: 70 percent said they do not incorporate automatic-escalation in plan design.

Diane Gallagher, vice president of practice management at American Century, said record keepers have the resources to track individual retirement readiness figures, and encouraged plan advisors to work with sponsors to better understand participants’ readiness in order to gauge the overall health of the plan.

“Even with those projections just covering assets in the employer-sponsored plan, doing so would at the very least provide a snapshot of individual progress,” said Gallagher in an email statement.

“By considering replacement ratios, the team can consider progressive defaults in plan design to continue to move the ratios up,” she added.

In 2013, the Department of Labor proposed a new rule that would require lifetime income illustrations in 401(k) account statements. A finalized rule has since not emerged.

And in a study published in March of 2016, the Government Accountability Office recommended the DOL provide additional tools and guidance on retirement income replacement rates, for the purpose of modifying planning tools to accommodate better savings outcomes. DOL agreed with the recommendations in GAO’s report, and said it is planning to provide new replacement rate tools by June 2017.

Many private sector providers are not waiting for regulators to act. Numerous record keepers and managed account providers have added income replacement rate calculators in the latest versions of their platforms.

Clearly, retirement plan providers will be instrumental in cuing sponsors to the latest replacement rate estimating tools. Nearly eight in 10 of the sponsors surveyed in American Century’s study report working with a plan advisor; two-thirds said they were “very satisfied” with advisor performance; another 33 percent said they were “somewhat satisfied.”

Yet despite general satisfaction levels with advisors, half of sponsors in the survey have not even deployed an automatic-enrollment feature, and only 30 percent deploy automatic-escalation; almost half of sponsors said they haven’t even considered the latter.

Instant Insights /

Few sponsors test for employee retirement readiness, study shows

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