Roadblocks to Retirement Plan Success

Now more than ever, retirement plan professionals and retirement plan sponsors should focus on implementing processes and procedures to assist the participants covered by the qualified retirement in saving for a dignified retirement.  The attached DCIIA article outlines five potential barriers to successful retirement outcomes.

Five potential roadblocks to successful retirement outcomes are: 

1. Missing participants
2. 401(k) loan leakage
3. Movement of assets out of plans via rollovers
4. Participants leaving the plan at retirement
5. Obstacles to in-plan annuities.

While there may be other barriers to better retirement outcomes, recognizing the above five is a good first step to improve retirement readiness for America’s defined contribution plan participants. We encourage plan sponsors and their service providers to discuss actions that can be taken to address these administrative, operational and inertia-based challenges. Having conversations with service providers and industry associations, as well as collaborating with other like-minded plan sponsors, can go a long way to help remove some of these barriers, thereby making the participant’s road to a successful retirement as smooth as possible. Solving these challenges is not “all or nothing” – but over time, if retirement plan professionals and plan sponsors commit to taking incremental action to address them, we can make real progress toward enabling America’s workers to retire with financial security. (from Five Practical Barriers to Better Retirement Outcomes, DCIIA)