When The Pew Charitable Trusts, one of the largest non-profit think tanks in the country, launched its retirement savings project in 2014, a primary function of the initiative focused on workplace retirement plan fees.

Now Pew has launched a lean, online fee-comparison tool intended to raise awareness among investors and policy makers of the impact high fees can have on retirement security.

Awareness of the correlation is in short supply, according to Pew's research, which has explored employer and participant awareness of investment and administrative fees in retirement plans.

“We need greater awareness of fees and their affect on retirement savings,” said John Scott, director of retirement savings at Pew, in a webinar rollout of the new online tool.

Research released by the project earlier this year showed one-third of plan participants knew nothing of the fees paid through their workplace retirement plan. Two-thirds of participants had not read fee disclosure forms. And 81 percent of small and mid-sized plan sponsors admitted to not having a good grasp of the fees charged on the plans they sponsor.

“We want to make the point that there is a lot of awareness and education that needs to go on around retirement accounts,” Scott said during the presentation.

Retirement savings calculators are a staple among plan service provider platforms. Retail robo-advisors have also used online tools to underscore the potential savings when using passively invested funds over actively managed funds.

But the emergence of a comparative fee tool from a think tank may represent a threshold-crossing within the larger fee debate. That debate has seen a new body of case law in the past decade, emerged as a focus of the Labor Department and Securities and Exchange Commission, and set off a race-to-the-bottom pricing war among the nation's largest fund managers.

Pew's tool is designed for simplicity. Three scenario options—one for the early investor, one for an investor prepping to retire, and a tool that allows an individual to compare their plan fees to the calculator's benchmark fees—highlight how fees can drive dramatic difference in retirement outcomes.

In the early investor scenario, two millennials making $60,000 a year save 7 percent of pay every two weeks. One chooses a fund with an annual return of 6 percent that charges 205 basis points. Another chooses a fund with the same return, but charges just 5 basis points.

After 40 years, the lower fee account is worth more than $749,000, while the expensive investment has earned just 443,500.

The higher fee fund would have to earn 33 percent more annually to make of the savings lost to fees, an unlikely scenario, noted Scott.

“The savings in fees can be thought of as several years of delaying Social Security claims, or several years of additional work,” said Scott.

Young workers are the least likely to be aware of plan fees, Pew's research shows.

“The effect of compounding of fees over time can make a huge difference for younger workers,” noted Scott, who said education and awareness initiatives stand to have the most impact on those workers with the most time to save.

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