Rest “Room”

It should come as no surprise that the vast majority of plan sponsors who have adopted automatic enrollment have chosen to default that initial deferral at 3% of pay. No, that’s not the level at which most plans match deferrals, and it’s certainly not a level of deferral likely to produce sufficient retirement savings. It is, however, the starting deferral rate attributed to such programs under the auto-enroll safe harbor provisions in the Pension Protection Act (PPA). Coincidence? I think not.

Ironically, that same safe harbor provision requires that employers either go back and automatically enroll all eligible participants (giving them the ability to opt-out), or be able to establish that they did at some point (see “The Pension Protection Act: This Changes Everything”). Most providers, certainly pre-PPA, were unable to provide the requisite proof of those prior enrollments—and thus it would seem that most employers seeking the protections of that auto-enroll safe harbor would have re-enrolled all eligibles; and yet, surveys (including PLANSPONSOR’s own DC Survey) routinely show that only about one in three employers do so. In fact, twice as many choose to implement automatic enrollment only for new hires (see “IMHO: A Prospective Perspective”).

Now, when you look at the former finding and compare it to the latter, you can only draw one of two conclusions: either that most plan sponsor adoptees of automatic enrollment aren’t interested in obtaining the protections afforded by the PPA’s safe harbor, or they don’t understand that their approach doesn’t qualify.


There’s nothing wrong with opting to embrace automatic enrollment at a point in time and only applying that to employees hired after that date. Sure, you won’t garner the benefits of the PPA safe harbor, but most plan sponsors probably don’t “need” that (though they might well want it). Moreover, there are some very real financial consequences associated with automatic enrollment—survey after survey shows that very nearly every employee who is automatically enrolled stays in the plan. Depending on your match and current participation levels, that can add up to a lot of additional contribution dollars.

Oddly, as real as that financial impact is, that’s not the reason I most often hear from plan sponsors. Instead, they are (still) more inclined to suggest that the longer-tenured workers have had—and rebuffed—their opportunity to participate in the plan. Many plan sponsors remain worried that these longer-tenured workers will consider such “un-permissioned” actions to be some kind of personal affront. And yet, five years after the passage of the PPA, all I ever seem to hear are stories about how those more-seasoned employees are appreciative, even thankful, for finally being enrolled in the plan. It’s as though they heard the messages all those years, knew they should be doing something about retirement, but didn’t quite know how to get started.

There’s another interesting finding from PLANSPONSOR’s DC Survey, and it has held true for several years running. Asked about their motivation for adopting automatic enrollment, the vast majority—nearly two-thirds, in fact—say, “Our organization wanted to be more proactive in helping employees save.”

Perhaps it’s now a good time to help the rest of them.

—Nevin E. Adams, JD