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How Economic Uncertainty Impacts Retirement Plan Participation and Savings

Posted on June 13, 2025 by Editorial TeamLeave a comment

By Mark Olsen, Managing Director at PlanPILOT

Economic uncertainty (such as we’re feeling today throughout the country) has a pervasive effect not only on business in general, but on the behavior and participation of employees enrolled in their company’s retirement savings plan. As an example, in a study released in the Journal of Pension Economics and Finance, researchers estimated that changes in behavior of a young participant during the Great Recession of 2008 could potentially decrease their retirement account value by as much as 8% by age 62.

At PlanPILOT, our experience shows that plan sponsors who are aware of these headwinds to effective retirement savings can prepare ahead of time to lessen the effect on employee participation. Better plan design, enhanced features, and thorough monitoring can all help lower impacts on participants.

Let’s take a look at the various ways economic downturns affect participant behavior.

Changes in Participant Contributions

Not surprisingly, economic downturns and recessions trigger uncertainty and reflexive defensive financial behavior in most consumers, especially those who heavily depend upon a weekly paycheck to meet their living expenses. The daily avalanche of media exposure and economic commentary that may suggest or forecast economic troubles only fan the flames of this uncertainty and instinctual fear among employees.

As a result, just as consumers naturally reduce spending, participants may be inclined to reduce current contributions if they fear they could have their work hours reduced, lose their job, or rising consumer prices may impact their ability to pay their monthly bills. This could incline participants to reduce their regular contributions, both to increase emergency savings and as a behavioral reaction to perceived (or real) threats to basic economic survival.

In addition, not only might eligible employees decline to enroll in the retirement plan during recessionary periods (despite attractive benefits, such as the employer matching contribution), those that do may be reluctant to choose a meaningful contribution rate during recessionary or other difficult periods, due to anxiety over committing too much of their paycheck at the time.

Impact on Employee Management of Their Account

Recessions and other economic declines often catch the consumer by surprise. These periods typically follow surges in consumer spending, heightened credit card and other consumer debt balances, and looser lending practices. As a result, when money becomes tight at home, participants can find themselves in a financial pinch in managing their debt payments and living expenses. This often leads to participant inquiries about loans from their retirement plan and hardship withdrawals.

Since such distributions lower the invested balances of the participants’ account, the net effect is a loss of compounding accumulation and lower probability of the participant meeting their retirement objectives. Participants sometimes justify their withdrawals and loans by rationalizing they will make it up later, but this seldom occurs, due to the same behavior impediments that often interfere with getting employees to enroll in the first place.

Unfortunately, loans and hardship distributions also occur during troughs in the market cycle, when account values have declined. Withdrawals at this inopportune time therefore have a greater impact on future wealth accumulation, since it may take several years of future growth to make up what has been lost by the distribution.

Loss in Account Value Affects Behavior Too

Since defined-contribution retirement plans (e.g., 401(k) or 403(b)) have participant savings and contributions invested in the financial markets (via exchanged traded funds or mutual funds), market pullbacks and volatility can have a significant effect on participant behavior as well.

A declining stock market can cause participants to either revise their contribution amounts (thinking they are contributing to a losing effort) or to reallocate their current holdings to a more conservative portfolio mix (potentially at an unfavorable time to do so). This reactionary behavior can be detrimental to long-term investment returns and retirement goals.

How Plan Sponsors Can Provide Support

There are many ways a plan sponsor can support participants when economic turbulence occurs. Many of these strategies are not difficult to implement and could go a long way in boosting employee morale and enthusiasm for the plan itself and in the workplace.

Communication: Communicate with employees. Let them know management is well aware of the difficulties everyone is facing in a down economy. Summarize steps the company is taking to assist and support the workforce. Outline new initiatives, features to benefit plans, and resources provided by the company.
Emphasize educational programs: Whether existing programs or new ones to be added, alert and promote educational workshops, webinars, and other information that could help participants with their financial issues and solutions that may be available.
Upgrade or implement retirement income planning resources: These programs may help employees understand “how the numbers work” and the possible outcomes before making crucial financial decisions (such as adjusting account allocations or contribution amounts).
Provide counseling: Many times, employees are not experienced with financial matters to make sound decisions or need qualified expertise with money matters. Provide company-paid debt counselors or financial professionals to meet with participants and answer questions or provide guidance.
Upgrade retirement account resources to include features to help with concerns or anxiety in difficult market conditions: These could include rebalancing functions, auto-rebalancing, target-date default investment choices, as well as specific articles that address how to approach and navigate through a down market period.
Review the retirement plan provisions: Are the hardship withdrawal and account loan procedures clear and understandable? Should there be more flexibility or choice for the investment options? Does the plan need an upgrade to reflect current laws and rules or to implement better features and resources?

Some or all of these initiatives can demonstrate the plan sponsor’s commitment to the company’s workforce and participants and foster goodwill and a more positive work environment during difficult periods.

Utilize Expertise to Design an Effective Plan or Improve It

PlanPILOT is uniquely positioned to help employers customize and design retirement benefit plans that meet your needs and objectives. Our mission is to deliver comprehensive advisory services that help plan sponsors meet and exceed their fiduciary responsibilities by providing the proper risk management solutions and independent advice they need and deserve.

Are you ready to upgrade to a new standard for your benefit planning? Reach out to me at (312) 973-4913 or send an email to mark.olsen@PlanPILOT.com to learn more about how we can customize our services and your plan to fit your unique needs.

About Mark

Mark Olsen is the managing director at PlanPILOT, an independent retirement plan consulting firm headquartered in Chicago. PlanPILOT delivers comprehensive retirement plan advisory services to 401(k), 403(b), and 457 plan sponsors. His specialties include plan governance, investment searches, investment monitoring, and plan oversight. Mark is recognized as a leader in the industry and speaks at national conferences, including those organized by Pensions & Investments, and CUPA-HR.

Strategies to Help Employees Maximize Retirement Benefits

Posted on May 5, 2025 by Editorial TeamLeave a comment

By Mark Olsen, Managing Director at PlanPILOT

Although participation rates in company-sponsored retirement plans continue to slowly increase, the pressure on employers to encourage and increase participation remains. Recent reports indicate an astonishing 83% of surveyed employees have regrets about retirement plan decisions they’ve made, 41% plan to work longer than expected, and 83% also plan to work after career retirement.

It might be surmised that a significant cause of this worker angst is the current investment environment. In truth, however, this lack of “retirement readiness” has been building for some time, even during periods of favorable market returns. As we discuss often at PlanPILOT, designing and building a solid retirement plan for your employees is one thing; getting them to engage and fully participate is another. For employer-sponsored retirement plans, it’s not simply a “Field of Retirement Dreams,” where if you just build it, they will come. Here are our top strategies to encourage employees to maximize their benefits.

Why Employee Communication Matters

Communication with your employees is critical to fostering a productive, satisfied workforce where employees feel secure in their jobs and appreciated. Secondly and especially in today’s investment, economic, and employment environment, workers may be uncertain and anxious about how current events may impact their retirement in the future. They may therefore be more likely to turn toward their employer for guidance and options.

Create an Effective Communication Plan

Participation and effectiveness tends to increase when workers feel a sense of ease in understanding how their retirement plan works and is accessed, the short-term and longer-term benefits of participation and if these features are communicated in simple terms that can be readily understood and acted upon.

This includes a year-round calendar of notices and encouragement, repeated reminders of important deadlines (including those for enrollment and tax filing), and announcements of special events well in advance, such as educational live workshops or coming webinars.

Implement Multiple Communication Channels

Employers need to remember that their workforce could be made up of diverse demographics who prefer or use contrasting channels of communication. While younger employees may be amenable to text or email messaging, older workers may prefer literature or other forms of communication, such as live meetings, webinars, or one-on-one discussions with HR staff.

In addition, the changing nature of the workplace requires multiple avenues for employees to receive and access retirement benefit information. Remote work and non-traditional working hours are here to stay for many companies and industries, so in-house live workshops or a trip to the HR department, for example, may not be effective for these employees.

Understand Your Workforce

Recognize diverse levels of financial literacy: Customize your communication about your retirement plan to accommodate varied levels of understanding about money matters

Tailor communications and education for different financial situations: Your senior leadership team has different financial needs and understanding than your other employees. Accommodate these needs with appropriate levels of discussion and description about their benefits to maximize relevance and engagement.

Best Practices for Effective Communications and Participation

Use simple and inclusive language: Retirement benefits can be complex, especially to new hires or those without financial education or experience. Break down complicated concepts, avoid the use of “jargon” and technical terms. Use simple examples and language, and be mindful of potential cultural differences and language barriers.

Provide multiple platforms to explain programs and benefits: Implement email, intranet, and mobile apps for easy access by those who are comfortable with technology. At the same time, provide physical literature, such as brochures, newsletters, and public notices in the workplace for those who may not have access or are uncomfortable with such technology, including face-face or virtual meetings with knowledgeable HR staff or other experts for those who prefer the human touch.

Offer various financial education and workshops: Create education programs that not only explain the details of plan benefits and how to maximize them, but also on how to enroll, make choices among the myriad of options and best practices of monitoring plan accounts. Encourage questions and hold special relevant and topical events that enhance employee financial education. Such topics could include discussions on account allocation, maximizing health plans for every stage in life, how to pay for college costs, debt counseling, and effective tax or estate planning.

Utilize alternative presentation methods: Use infographics, charts, videos, and active character illustrations and examples to make complex concepts easier to understand. Have experts discuss real-life experiences and share stories that explain and illustrate the impact of active retirement planning (or the lack of it).

Include employee mentors and ambassadors: Select and train leaders within the workforce who can not only assist in guiding and encouraging participation amongst their fellow workers, but who could also function as ambassadors for them, communicating with management about worker needs and upgrades that may be effective in addressing needs and improve enrollment within the plan.

Encourage feedback and carefully monitor participation: Measure the effectiveness of your communication programs by encouraging feedback from participants. What are they excited about or what is missing that would enhance your plan? Conduct surveys and interviews to glean feedback about what is effective and working, and what isn’t. Make both verbal and written surveys open-ended to allow workers to express themselves, rather than simply choosing numbers on a grade spectrum or the often ineffective “always, sometimes, never” answer choices.

Utilize Expertise to Design an Effective Plan and Promote It

About Mark

Designing a Retirement Plan That Supports Financial Wellness

Posted on April 11, 2025 by Blessilda EvalLeave a comment

By Mark Olsen, Managing Director at PlanPILOT

Financial wellness for employees hasn’t traditionally been a concern for employers in the past, but more employees today cite “finances” as a major stress point, potentially leading to lower productivity, lack of focus on their job, and lower motivation. With high housing costs, a potentially slowing economy, the prospect of losing jobs to automation, and continual high living costs in some areas, employers would be wise to address this issue in their company benefits program.

PlanPILOT discussed this in our February blog article. We pointed out greater demand by employees for such features and how employers should utilize services, such as those we provide to make financial wellness a priority within benefit programs. In fact, a recent survey revealed that over 60% of Gen-Z and Millennial workers believe it’s their employer’s responsibility to help employees maintain and improve their financial wellness.

What Is Financial Wellness?

In simple terms, for most employees, financial wellness generally meets the following common criteria:

Having an understanding and control over day-day and month-month finances
Being able to absorb a financial emergency expense without increasing credit card debt
Having a sense of future financial goals and how these could be met
Lifestyle expenses not exceeding after-tax income
Keeping debt under control and implementing regular contributions to savings

While none of the above should be all that surprising, the crux of the problem centers around the idea that while there is certainly ample online information available to employees to help them tackle their financial problems, having the understanding and tools to implement solutions to these issues is lacking. For example, the survey mentioned above also reveals that less than 25% of respondents had a budget in place, less than 28% worked with an advisor, and less than 16% had a written plan with an advisor. It’s clear that consumers need more assistance with their finances, and employers are in a good position to provide help via well-designed employee benefit plans.

Keys to Implementing Financial Wellness Programs

Financial stress can be detrimental to overall employee morale, focus, and job security. If an employee spends part of their workday thinking about money problems, their productivity suffers, they may be unmotivated, and this negative attitude can spread through the workforce. Employees who feel unsupported by their employer may be more likely to leave too.

To provide this type of support (in higher demand today), plan sponsors should consider the following:

Think about the needs of all employees: Your workforce may be diverse in age differences and financial needs (student loans versus saving for a house versus nearing retirement). Confirm your program addresses these differences.
Use the resources at your disposal: Include input from HR professionals, benefits consultants, plan recordkeepers, your tax professionals, and others.
Don’t feel your plan has to “do it all”: Utilize available online resources or subscription programs to fill in gaps which your company cannot cover.
Implement communication and training programs: Employees may be reluctant to use financial wellness features if they don’t know about them or are unsure how to use what is provided. Include frequent notifications, workshops, and training programs to encourage participation.
Watch the numbers: Financial wellness programs shouldn’t be “provide and forget” initiatives. Include periodic monitoring, surveys, and reviews by management to verify these programs are meeting and improving participation metrics and employee satisfaction.

Include Impactful Features Based on Current Real-Time Issues

Your financial wellness program stands a greater chance of attracting participation and achieving your goals of higher employee morale and productivity if the program addresses the acute financial issues many are facing today. Here are several we at PlanPILOT recommend:

General financial literacy: Learn how to set and stick to a budget, pay down credit card balances, finance a home purchase. Concepts such as compounding interest, basic investment methods, how interest rates affect your finances, etc., are all worthwhile topics.
Retirement planning: Why contributing to a retirement plan matters, maximizing the employer match, what may be needed to sustain a retirement, and the basics of Social Security and Medicare are all discussed in the media today. Include topics of automatic enrollment, default investment options, and contribution maximums.
Debt counseling: American household debt is at record highs. Include programs that include debt counseling and opportunities to meet with professional debt counselors to help affected workers manage and get out of debilitating debt situations.
Student loan assistance: Student loan debt continues to plague college graduates, despite federal assistance and forgiveness programs (which appear to be disappearing with the current Administration). Providing counseling and resources to help with consolidation and servicing that could help employees manage their considerable student loan debt burden could be a welcome and popular benefit.
Incentivize financial wellness: Rewarding employees for taking advantage of these initiatives (attending workshops, meeting with counselors or vendors) could encourage participation. Incentives could be as simple as providing lunch or earning PTO credits.

Overall, considering and addressing financial wellness in your benefit program demonstrates your awareness of today’s family financial challenges and a commitment to helping your employees meet these challenges. With a proactive approach and working with skilled and experienced professionals in design and implementation, you can have the type of benefit program that attracts and retains top talent in your industry.

How Much “Wellness” Does Your Plan Provide?

PlanPILOT is uniquely positioned to help employers customize and design benefit plans that meet your needs and objectives. Our mission is to deliver comprehensive advisory services that help plan sponsors meet and exceed their fiduciary responsibilities by providing the proper risk management solutions and independent advice they need.

About Mark

Adoption of SECURE 2.0 Optional Provisions

Posted on March 11, 2025 by Editorial TeamLeave a comment

By Mark Olsen, Managing Director at PlanPILOT

The SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 was the most comprehensive retirement plan legislation in over 15 years and included both required and optional provisions for individual retirement accounts and employer-sponsored retirement plans. Due to the complexity of the legislation (with approximately 92 new provisions and delayed IRS guidance on specific aspects), plan sponsors have been somewhat slow to upgrade their employee benefit programs to reflect the new regulations.

In our consultations with plan sponsors, one area where we observe many instances of omission is inclusion of the “optional provisions” of the SECURE 2.0 regulations. These include:

Disaster relief distribution options and more lenient tax treatment
Employer matching contributions based upon student loan payments
Designating employer contributions as post-tax Roth contributions
Penalty-free distributions for victims of domestic abuse
Self-certification for distributions due to hardship withdrawal requests
A $1,000 withdrawal option for personal emergencies
Pension-lined emergency savings accounts up to $2,500

Observations of Early Adoption by Employers

In the two years since the SECURE 2.0 was signed into law, some of these optional provisions have been readily implemented by plan sponsors. These include the hardship withdrawal self-certification provision, the allowance for domestic abuse withdrawals, and the retirement account force-out provision (for accounts less than $7,000). The withdrawal provisions appear to be administratively simpler to implement and the popularity of the account force-out provision could be a cost-savings move for plan sponsors. Non-profits have been particularly receptive to implementing distribution provisions in the event of natural disasters or terminal illness. Many of these early adoptions suggest that financial wellness solutions continue to be a top priority of plan sponsors.

Understandably, most plan sponsors have been receptive to implementing provisions that only require small adjustments (such as the expanded “catch-up” provisions within DC plans for those of ages 60-63) with little additional administrative or technology upgrade expense.

Other Provisions Are Slow to Gain Traction or Interest

Even though several of these additional features have been welcomed and implemented, others haven’t experienced much enthusiasm from plan sponsors. For employers, this reluctance has been primarily due to: a) a lack of available technology to adopt many of these optional features and, b) uncertainty about how the different provisions should be administered.

As an example, the student loan matching provision (where an employer’s matching contribution is based upon the participant’s payment toward their educational loans instead of their payroll deferral contribution) has garnered little interest from employers, though there has been enthusiastic interest from participants. This is apparently due to employer concern over fraud (due to the self-certification criteria) and the difficulty of accessing loan information from the U.S. Dept of Education. Sponsors also cited administrative hurdles to including other features, such as the emergency savings account provision.

Legal uncertainty and the lack of guidance on the effects or fiduciary risk exposure that accompany inclusion of some provisions seems to be holding back many plan sponsors. These include the saver’s match contribution, the employer-match-to-Roth feature, the emergency savings provision, and the student loan match.

In particular, the employer-match-to-Roth provision had initially generated a great deal of excitement that quickly fizzled as employers expressed doubts and uneasiness around delving into this uncharted territory, especially without legal guidance. Even now, plan sponsors need to be sure their payroll service vendors or record-keeper companies have the administrative tools and capacity to track and designate these different fund classifications.

More Additions Possible With Greater Guidance

Interestingly, plan sponsors appear open to enhancing their programs for employees, and adding more of the options provided by SECURE 2.0, as long as their concerns were addressed and solutions were provided. As an example, more than half of plan sponsors surveyed expressed interest in providing a “lifetime income” feature (aka annuities) in their retirement plan, but cited fiduciary risk, administrative difficulties, and participant utilization as significant concerns, and wished to wait to see how the marketplace evolves for this type of commitment.

Does Your Benefit Program Measure Up?

PlanPILOT is uniquely positioned to help employers customize and design benefit plans that meet your unique needs and objectives. Our mission is to deliver comprehensive advisory services that help plan sponsors meet and exceed their fiduciary responsibilities by providing the proper risk management solutions and independent advice they need.

If you’re ready to upgrade to a new standard for your benefit planning, reach out to us at (312) 973-4913 or send an email to mark.olsen@PlanPILOT.com to learn more about how we can customize our services and your plan to fit your unique needs.

About Mark

Top Retirement Plan Trends to Watch in 2025

Posted on February 13, 2025 by Editorial TeamLeave a comment

By Mark Olsen, Managing Director at PlanPILOT

The scope and structure of retirement plans evolved significantly in 2024 and this trend will continue unabated into 2025. One aspect receiving considerable attention is the concept that retirement planning is a shared responsibility of the employee and the employer and plan sponsors are increasingly motivated to implement new innovations to retain top talent and assist their employees in planning for their future.

This responsibility on the part of plan sponsors has also given rise to the need for companies to utilize the services of advisor firms, such as PlanPILOT, to provide customized strategies for retirement plan design, implementation, and governance. Here are the leading retirement plan trends we see emerging over the course of this year.

More Emphasis on Participant “Financial Wellness” and Education

The most recent Federal Reserve study on retirement readiness stated that nearly a third of American non-retired workers do not have any retirement savings and of those that do, the average balance is less than $100,000. Further, 35% of those surveyed felt they were worse off than the previous year and another third felt they were off track.

Plan sponsors have responded with greater demand for educational and financial wellness tools for participants and this trend is expected to continue into 2025. Kevin Crain, Executive Director of the Institutional Retirement Income Council, believes that “a critical priority in 2025” will be to provide education and utilization studies that will help plan sponsors, consultants, and advisors implement such programs. In addition, these enhancements are expected to provide participants with user-friendly and AI-interactive planning tools that can help enhance financial wellness and retirement readiness for employee-participants.

Greater Focus on Retirement Income Solutions

With the continued decrease in traditional defined-benefit pension programs available to participants that could provide a predictable and reliable source of retirement income, plan sponsors have been looking to evaluate and implement retirement-income solutions within their defined-contribution programs.

This trend could accelerate as plan sponsors continue to consider product offerings such as hybrid target-date funds, customized annuities, lifetime income products, or systematic withdrawal options for participants. Tools that integrate Social Security income benefit planning and Medicare enrollment guidance are also expected to increase in scope, helping participants optimize their Social Security and Medicare elections. The demand for these types of options will continue to gain momentum in the coming year as demand by plan participants and their employers for personalized planning tools increases.

Proper implementation will likely require support from consultants and advisors to provide evaluation and selection processes, as well as further studies and surveys to help educate plan sponsors about the benefits of such programs to their employees.

Look for More Enrollment and Contribution-Increase Automation

The success of auto-enrollment features in defined-contribution plans has led to increased participation among employees as well as higher overall plan savings. Expect plan sponsors to build upon these achievements in 2025 with additions of default auto-escalation capabilities within retirement plans, where a participant’s contributions may automatically increase year-over-year.

Qualified default investment alternative (QDIA) choices will continue to evolve in the coming year. While not expected to broaden into retirement income options just yet, so-called “target-date” funds as the QDIA in retirement plans remain a popular solution for participants who are reluctant to make their own allocation choices and should continue to evolve in their composition.

Expanded “Catch-Up” Contribution Limits and Roth Focus

The SECURE 2.0 Act in 2022 provided significant changes to the retirement world, including increased contribution limits for those nearing retirement age. Beginning in 2025, employees aged 60-63 can make “catch-up” contributions that are 150% larger than normal catch-up provisions. These are in addition to normal contribution limits for qualified defined-contribution retirement plans.

In addition, all catch-up contributions for those over 50 are required to be designated to Roth after-tax accounts within a participants’ overall account, starting in 2026. Plan sponsors should update their plans to comply with these provisions as well as update their educational programs to help employees understand and take full advantage of these valuable benefit options.

Utilizing Professional Assistance

PlanPILOT is uniquely positioned to help employers customize and design benefit plans that meet your unique needs and objectives. If you’re ready to upgrade to a new standard for your benefit planning, reach out to us at (312) 973-4913 or send an email to mark.olsen@PlanPILOT.com to learn more about how we can customize our services and your plan to fit your unique needs.