4 Problems at the Intersection of Finance and HR

They are two of the most visible departments in corporations even though neither directly produces revenue, but does require expenditures -- Finance and HR. Historically, they have been at odds neither particularly caring about the worries of the other despite being inextricably linked. This occurs in many ways, but I'm going to focus on four in the order that they seem to arise:

1. Recruiting
2. Cost control and stability
3. Retention
4. Workforce transition

Of course there are many more, but I have some thoughts that link all four of these together. In 2019, that's not always easy as there are constant pushes in Congress to tell employers how much they must pay, which benefits they must provide, and at what costs. How then does one company differentiate itself from another?

To the extent possible, every employer today seems to offer teleworking, flexible work hours, and paid time off banks. While they once were, those are no longer differentiators. After the Affordable Care Act took effect, the health plans at Company X started to look a lot like the health plans at Company Y.

I have a different idea and while I am probably biased by my consulting focus, I am also biased by research that I read. Employees are worried about retiring someday. They are worried about whether they will have enough money or even if they have any way of knowing if they will have enough money. They are worried about outliving their wealth (or lack thereof). They are worried about having the means to support their health in retirement.

I know -- you think I have veered horribly from my original thesis. We're coming back.

Today, most good-sized companies have 401(k) plans and in an awful lot of those cases, they are safe harbor plans. They are an expectation, so having one does not help you the employer in recruiting. While once they had pizzazz, today they are routine. 

Cost stability seems a given, but it's not. Common benchmarks for the success of a 401(k) plan including the percentage of employees that participate at various levels. You score better if your employees do participate and at higher levels. But, that costs more money.

If there's nothing about that program that sets you apart, it doesn't help you to retain your employees. And, as we all have learned, the cost of unwanted turnover is massive often exceeding a year's salary. In other words, if you lose a desirable employee earning $100,000 per year, it is estimated that the total true cost of replacing her is about $100,000. That would have paid for a lot of years of retirement plan costs for her.

There will come a time, however, that our desirable employee thinks it's time to retire. But, she's not certain if she is able. And, even if she works out that she is able, retirement is so sudden. One day, she's getting up and working all nine to five and the next, she has to fill that void. Wouldn't it be great to be able to transition her into retirement gradually while she transitions her skills and knowledge to her replacement?

You need a differentiator. You need something different, exciting, and better. You need to be the kid on the block that everyone else envies. 

You would be the envy of all the others if you won at recruiting, kept your costs level (as a percentage of payroll) and on budget, retained key employees, and had a vehicle that allows for that smooth transition.

I had a conversation with a key hiring executive earlier this month. He said he cannot get mid-career people to come to his organization from [and he mentioned another peer organization]. He was exasperated. He said, "We're better and everyone knows it, but their best people won't come over." I asked him why. He said, "It's that pension and I can't get one put in here." I asked him to tell me more and he explained it as one of those new-fangled cash balance plans with guaranteed return of principal -- i.e., no investment risk for participants, professionally managed assets, the ability to receive 401(k) rollovers, and the option to take a lump sum or various annuity options at retirement. He said that it's the "talk of the town over there" and that even though it seems mundane when you first hear about it, it's their differentiator and it wins for them.

We talked for a while. He wants one. He wants one for himself and he wants one to be as special as his competitor. He wants to be envied too. We talked more.

Stay tuned for their new market-based cash balance plan ... maybe. He and I hope that maybe becomes reality.

Hospitals and a Sky is Falling Economic Prediction

The headline from today's CFO Journal published by the Wall Street Journal was stark: "Sour Economic Outlook Weighs on CFO Spending, Expansion Plans. Let's leave off the lack of expansion plans, but focus on spending.

Consider a low-margin industry that employs highly-skilled workers in short supply -- hospitals -- in particular. Talk to heads of HR in the hospital sector. Most have nearly identical top concerns: how do I attract and retain skilled professionals? What they are obviously referring to are physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, technologists, and technicians. These are all careers that require very specific, often extensive, education. They are all in short supply and feeling burnout. What is there to keep them around?

Direct cash is not a good option. First, as the WSJ piece suggests, CFOs just won't part with the levels of cash necessary to attract and retain. Second, and while data demonstrating this phenomenon are difficult to find, people live to their levels of income. In other words, if you have a doctor earning $200,000 per year with annual savings in his 401(k) only, if you give him a $50,000 pay increase, his savings in many cases will remain 401(k) only.

This is not good. Some day that physician is going to burn out. He may tire of a profession that has changed from being highly personal to largely impersonal. He may tire of insurers telling him how to practice medicine. He may tire of government intervention.

In any event, if he tires, he is going to do so without being prepared for retirement.

Therein may lie the key.

Prepare your skilled staff for retirement. Do it not by increasing your costs, but by reallocating your labor costs.

Most people live to (or above regardless of pay or nearly to) their paychecks. And, they want pensions.

Give them what they want. Give them a pension that checks all the boxes:

• Secure
• Lifetime Income Options Without Subsidizing the Profits of Large Insurers
• Portability
• Easy to Understand
• Professionally Managed Investments
• Stable, Predictable, and Manageable Costs

The time is now. Act while the economy is still strong and prepare yourselves and your employees for when it's not.

Using Cash Balance to Improve Outcomes for Sponsors and Participants

In a recent Cash Balance survey from October Three, the focus to a large extent was on interest crediting rates used by plan sponsors in corporate cash balance plans. In large part, the study shows that those methods are mostly unchanged over the past 20 years or so, this, despite the passage of the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA) that gave statutory blessing to a new and more innovative design. I look briefly at what that design is and why it is preferable for plan sponsors.

Prior to the passage of PPA, some practitioners and plan sponsors had looked at the idea of using market-based interest crediting rates to cash balance plans. But, while it seemed legal, most shied away, one would think, due to both statutory and regulatory uncertainty as to whether such designs could be used in qualified plans.

With the passage of PPA, however, we now know that such designs, within fairly broad limits, are, in fact allowed by both statute and regulation. That said, very few corporate plan sponsors have adopted them despite extremely compelling arguments as to why they should be preferable.

Why are they preferable?

For roughly 20 years, the holy grail for defined benefit plan, including cash balance plan, sponsors has been reducing volatility and therefore risk. As a result, many have adopted what are known as liability driven investment (LDI) strategies. In a nutshell, as many readers will know, these strategies seek to match the duration of the investment portfolio to the duration of the underlying assets. Frankly, this is a tail wagging the dog type strategy. It forces the plan sponsor into conservative investments to match those liabilities.

Better is the strategy where liabilities match assets. We sometimes refer to that as investment driven liabilities (IDL). In such a strategy, if assets are invested aggressively, liabilities will track those aggressive investments. It’s derisking while availing the plan of opportunities for excellent investment returns.

How exactly does this work?

I alluded to the new design that was blessed by PPA. It is usually referred to as market-return cash balance (MRCB). In an MRCB design, with only minor adjustments necessitated by the law, the interest crediting rates are equal to the returns on plan assets (or the returns with a minor downward tweak). That means that liabilities track assets. However the assets move, the liabilities move with them meaning that volatility is negligible, and, in turn, risk to the plan sponsor is negligible. Yet, because this is a defined benefit plan, participants retain the option for lifetime income that so many complain is not there in today’s ubiquitous defined contribution world. (We realize that some DC plans do offer lifetime income options, but only after paying profits and administrative expenses to insurers (a retail solution) as compared to a wholesale solution in DB plans.)

When asked, many CFOs will tell you that their companies exited the defined benefit market because of the inherent volatility of the plans. While they loved them in the early 90s when required contributions were mostly zero, falling interest rates and several very significant bear markets led to those same sponsors having to make contributions they had not budgeted for. The obvious response was to freeze those plans and to terminate them if they could although more than not remain frozen, but not yet terminated.

Would those sponsors consider reopening them if the volatility were gone? What would be all of the boxes that would need to be checked before they would do so?

Plan sponsors and, because of the IDL strategies, participants now can get the benefits of professionally and potentially aggressively invested asset portfolios. So, what we have is a win-win scenario: very limited volatility for sponsors with participants having upside return potential, portability, and wholesale priced lifetime income options.

The survey, as well as others that I have seen that focus on participant outcomes and desires, tells us that this strategy checks all the boxes. Now is the time to learn how 2018’s designs are winnersfor plans sponsors and participants alike.

Wake Up and See the Light, Congress!

Congress has a once-in-a-generation opportunity. Since its first major overhaul in 1922, Congress has seen fir to make earth-shaking changes to the Internal Revenue Code (Code) once every 32 years. 1922. 1954. 1986. And, while it seems that they may be one year early this time, they are pitching tax reform once again.

The concept of qualified retirement plans as we know them today comes from the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) signed into law that Labor Day in 1974. Since that time, there have been relatively few changes to the Code affecting retirement plan design. And, frankly, most of them have come on the 401(k) side. In fact, Section 401(k) was added to the Code after ERISA and since then, we have been blessed with safe harbor plans, auto-enrollment, auto-escalation,Roth, and qualified default investment alternatives (QDIAs). Over the same period, little has been codified or regulated to help in propagating the defined benefit plan -- you know, that plan design that has helped many born in the 40s and early 50s to retire comfortably.

Isn't this the time? Surely, it can be done with little, if any, effective revenue effects.

Since ERISA, there have been really significant changes in defined benefit (DB) plan design including the now popular traditional cash balance plan, the even better market return cash balance plan, pension equity plan, and less used other hybrid plans. And, DB plans have lots of features that should make them more popular than DC plans, especially 401(k) plans.

• Participants can get annuity payouts directly from the plan, thereby paying wholesale rather than the retail prices they would pay from insurers for a DC account balance.
• Participants who prefer a lump sum can take one and if they choose, roll that amount over to an IRA.
• Assets are professionally invested and since employers have more leverage than do individuals, the invested management fees are better negotiated.
• In the event of corporate insolvency, the benefits are secure up to limits.
• Plan assets are invested by the plan sponsor so that participants don't have to focus on investment decisions for which they are woefully under-prepared.
• Participants don't have to contribute in order to benefit.

But, they could be better. Isn't it time that we allowed benefits to be taken in a mixed format, e.g., 50% lump sum, 25% immediate annuity, 25% annuity deferred to age 85? Isn't it time that these benefits should be as portable as participants might like? Isn't it time to get rid of some of the absolutely foolish administrative burdens put on plan sponsors by Congress -- those burdens that Congress thought would make DB plans more understandable, but actually just create more paperwork, more plan freezes, and more plan terminations?

Thus far, however, Congress seems to be missing this golden opportunity. And, in doing so, Congress cites the praise of the 401(k) system by people whose modeling never considers that many who are eligible for 401(k) plans just don't have the means to defer enough to make those models relevant to their situations.

Sadly, Congress prefers to keep its collective blinders on rather than waking up and seeing the light. Shame on them ...

Fact or Fiction in the Retirement Wellness Media

Sometimes you just have to wonder. Well, maybe you don't have to wonder, but I can speak for myself -- I certainly do have to wonder. The data that I read about simply cannot coexist. We cannot have record numbers of people deferring to 401(k) plans at record rates and yet still have almost universally low-five figure account balances, on average. At least we cannot unless we also have record amounts of leakage via plan loans, withdrawals, and both deferral and work stoppages.

I'm not going to cite a bunch of data here because I don't have it at my fingertips. I'm on the road and it's 5:30 AM, so think of this as your favorite (or not favorite) blogger ranting. I'm allowed, or at least I'm pretty sure I'm allowed.

Once upon a time (no, this is not the start of a fairy tale or one of Aesop's fables), American workers almost uniformly looked forward to the day when they could retire. They did that, in large part, on the backs of their corporate-sponsored defined benefit plans.

As we knew back then, defined benefit plans had many things about them that worked well toward this goal including (but definitely not limited to):

• Ability to generate lifetime income
• Lifetime income that could be compared to retirement expenses to understand what other resources might be needed
• Workforce management ability for plan sponsors using tools like retirement subsidies and early retirement windows

Since then, we've seen changes ... many changes. Initially, they were design and structure changes. With the growth of 401(k) plans and Congress' constant tinkering with defined benefit plans in a supposed effort to save them, there was first a move toward what we now know as hybrid plans (largely cash balance) and then toward freezing and sometimes terminating those defined benefit plans. Thinking back, the most common complaint I heard from corporate finance executives was the financial accounting volatility. Later on, funding volatility became perhaps a bigger issue.

I'll come back to this part of my rant later, but first it's time to return to my original topic.

According to an article that I read yesterday, 74% of respondents to a question said that lifetime income is important, but only 25% thought they had a way to generate it. So, in a tribute to the recently departed Adam West (the "real" Batman), riddle me this fine readers: "How does this comport with all the other articles telling me how well the 401(k) system is working?" Clearly something must be rotten in the state of Gotham.

We can do all of the modeling that we want and honestly, that modeling is in fact valid if, and that's a big if, participants can follow those models for their entire careers.If a person starts deferring at a reasonable level to their 401(k) when they are, say, 25 years old and continue to defer until some reasonable retirement age, all the while getting reasonable returns, that person will be able to retire and likely not outlive their resources.

They can do that, however, if they can use those balances to generate a steady stream of lifetime income. 

But, having reached the holy grail of retirement, these same people now want to do all the things they dreamed of while working. They wanted to retire to the beach or the mountains. They want to travel the world. They want to spoil their grandchildren. 

There is a problem with all of that. Those expenses are pretty front-loaded. That is, they are going to be very expensive in the first years of retirement. That will in turn deplete account balances that can be used to generate lifetime income. In other words, lifetime income may not be what you thought it was going to be. Or, said differently, the retirement wellness data must have a lot of fiction in it.

Once upon a time, that focus was on defined benefit plans. They focused on the employee who typically retired from a company in their 50s or 60s having worked for that company for 30 years or so. We all know that the current workforce doesn't tend to work 30 years for the same company, so that plan may be wrong.

But a defined benefit plan can still be right. Let it take a different form. Defined benefit plans have evolved to the point where they can look and feel like defined contribution plans, but critically still operate as defined benefit plans.

Why is this so critical? If the large majority of people think lifetime income is important, then we need plans that promote it. Yes, those people can get lifetime income from their 401(k), but if they are doing it through a commercial annuity, they have to purchase that annuity at "retail" rates. On the other hand, if they have a defined benefit plan, they can get better lifetime income from the same amount of money because they are getting the annuity at wholesale rates.

Now, there's a way to generate retirement wellness.

Holy Happiness, Batman.

Instead of Making Defined Contribution Look More Like Defined Benefit, ...

I don't think I've ever ended the title of a blog post with an ellipsis before. But, surely, there's a first time for everything.

Lately, the benefits press has written an awful lot about what must be the latest trend in employer-provided retirement benefits -- making the defined contribution (DC) plan look more like the defined benefit (DB) plan. Perhaps I am missing something, but it appears that this "major" initiative has two components to it (that's right, just two):

• Communication of an estimate of the amount of annuity a participant's account balance can buy
• The option to take a distribution from the plan as either a series of installments or as an annuity

Let's consider what's going on here.

Annuity Estimate

Yes, there is a huge push from the government and from some employers to communicate the annual benefit that can be "bought" with the participant's account balance. Most commonly, this is framed as a single life annuity beginning at age 65 using a dreamworld set of actuarial assumptions. For example, it might assume a discount rate in the range of 5 to 7 percent because that's the rate of return that the recordkeeper or other decision maker thinks or wants the participant to think the participant can get.

I have a challenge for those people. Go to the open annuity market. Find me some annuities from safe providers that have an underlying discount rate of 5 to 7 percent. You did say that you wanted a challenge, didn't you?

I'm taking a wild (perhaps not so wild) guess that in late 2016, you couldn't find those annuities. In fact, an insurer in business to make money (that is why they're in business, isn't it) would be crazy today to offer annuities with an implicit discount rate in that range.

But, annuity estimates often continue to use discount rates like that.

Distribution Options

Many DC plans offer distribution in a series of installments. Participants rarely take them, however, For most participants, the default behaviors are either 1) taking a lump sum distribution and rolling it over, or 2) taking a lump sum distribution and buying a proverbial (or not so proverbial) bass boat.

Why is this? I think it's a behavioral question. But, when retiring participants look at the amount that they can draw down from their account balances, it's just not as much as they had hoped. In fact, there is a tendency to suddenly wonder how they can possibly live on such a small amount. So, they might take a lump sum and spend it as needed and then hope something good will happen eventually.

Similarly, if they have the option of getting an annuity from the plan, they are typically amazed at how small that annuity payout is. And, even with the uptick in the number of DC plans offering annuity options, the take rate remains inconsequentially small.

A Better Way?

Isn't there a better way? 

Part of the switch from DB plans to DC plans was predicated on the concept of employees get it. They understand an account balance, but they can't get their arms around a deferred annuity. So, let's give them an account balance.

Part of the switch from DB to DC plans was to be able to capture the potential investment returns. Of course, with that upside potential comes downside risk. Let's give them most of that upside potential and let's take away the worst of that downside risk. That sounds great, doesn't it.

Once these participants got into their DC plans, they wanted investment options. I recall back in the late 80s and early 90s that a plan with as many as 8 investment options was viewed as having too many. Now, many plans have 25 or more such options. For what? The average participant isn't a knowledgeable investor. And, even the miraculous invention commonly known as robo-advice isn't going to make them one. Suppose we give them that upside potential with professionally managed assets that they don't have to choose.

Oh, that's available in many DC plans. They call them managed accounts. According to a Forbes article, management fees of 15 to 70 basis points on top of the fund fees are common. That can be a lot of expense. Suppose your account was part of a managed account with hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in it, therefore making it eligible for deeply discounted pricing.

There is a Better Way

You can give your participants all of this. It seems hard to believe, but it's been a little more than 10 years since Congress passed and President George W Bush signed the Pension Protection Act (PPA) of 2006. PPA was lauded for various changes made to 401(k) structures. These changes were going to make retirement plans great again. But, for most, they didn't.

Also buried in that bill was a not new, but previously legally uncertain concept now known as a market-return cash balance plan (MRCB). 

Remember all those concepts that I asked for in the last section, the MRCB has them all. Remember the annuity option that participants wanted, but didn't like because insurance company profits made the benefits too low. Well, the MRCB doesn't need to turn a profit. And, for the participants who prefer a lump sum, it would be an exceptionally rare (I am not aware of any) MRCB that doesn't have a lump sum option.

Plan Sponsor Financial Implications

Plan sponsors wanted out of the DB business largely because their costs were unpredictable. But, in an MRCB, properly designed, costs should be easy to budget for and within very tight margins. In fact, I might expect an MRCB to stay closer to budget than a 401(k) with a match (remember that the amount of the match is dependent upon participant behavior). And, in a DB world, if a company happens to be cash rich and in need of a tax deduction, there will almost always be the opportunity to advance fund, thereby accelerating those deductions.

Win-Win

It is a win-win. Why make your DC plan look like a DB when there is already a plan that gives you the best of both worlds.

Opinion: American Workers Need Pensions and They Should Look Like This

Since I last blogged, I've seen a lot of survey data. Among the very compelling themes has been that Americans are afraid that they will not have enough money with which to retire. Those fears are well founded for many.

As I've written here many times, the 401(k) plan was never intended to be the primary retirement source of retirement income for American workers. Neither was Social Security. Rather, Social Security was intended to be a supplement to bridge people for what was usually just a few years of retirement before death. Section 401(k) was a throw-in in a late 70s tax law that was suddenly discovered. It was intended to give companies a way to help their employees to save more tax effectively. And, remember, in the late 70s, the norm was that whatever company employed you at age 35 was likely to be your last full-time employer. ERISA had recently become law and most American workers had defined benefit pensions. These plans were designed to assist employers in recruiting and retaining employees.

Then, again, as I've written many times, along came change through the government and through quasi-governmental organizations. Employers didn't like the mismatch between cash flow requirements and financial accounting charges. New pension funding laws, beginning in 1987, were designed not to ensure responsible funding of pension plans, but to provide an offset to tax expenditures (a fancy name for tax breaks and government overspending). Looking at it from the standpoint of someone in Congress trying to decrease tax expenditures, if you can decrease required company contributions, you decrease their tax deductions, and thus cut those evil tax expenditures.

Nearly 30 years later, pensions have tried hard to go the way of the dinosaur. The fact is, however, that there are still lots of defined benefit pension plans out there. But, they don't look the same as they did 30 years ago. The laws have changed, creative minds have been at work, and new and better designs have emerged.

American workers generally should have employer-provided defined benefit pension plans. But, since these creative minds have been at work, what exactly should these new plans look like?

• While they offer a sense of stability in retirement, annuity payments do not appeal to many Americans and they do not necessarily understand them. So, while all defined benefit plans must have annuity options, they should also have lump sum options.
• The plans should not be "back-loaded" (a term that means that most of your accruals and therefore cost to your employer emerges late in your career). The typical final average pay plan of yesteryear was designed so that most of your accruals occurred close to or after you were eligible to retire. This made some sense when you spent your whole career with one employer. But, in 2016, that very rarely happens. So, plans should accrue benefits fairly ratably.
• Benefits should be portable. That is, you should be able to take them with you either to an IRA or to another employer. This works best if there is a lump sum option through which you can take a direct rollover and maintain the tax-deferred status.
• Employer costs should be predictable and stable. This can be achieved when there is no longer a mismatch between assets and liabilities in a plan.
• Employers should see that plan assets are professionally managed, but fluctuations in asset returns from those that are expected can be borne by plan participants.

This sounds like pension nirvana, doesn't it? Such plans and designs can't possibly exist.

Well, they do. 

The plan design that accomplishes this is often known as a Market Return Cash Balance Plan (MRCB).

While an MRCB carries with it all of the required characteristics of defined benefit plan and it looks a lot like a 401(k) or other defined contribution plan, it brings with it additional benefits. It satisfies all of the bullets I've outlined above. Budgeting gets easy and predictable. There is no "leakage" due to sudden expenses when a participant's car decides to break down or an unexpected flood ravages their house.

An MRCB is very suitable to be a primary retirement plan. You want to save a bit extra? That's what your 401(k) plan is for. 

If you are an employer and you're reading this, you really need to know more, don't you?

Preparing the Higher Paid for Retirement

Retirement readiness is getting lots of press these days. With the decrease in the number of ongoing defined benefit (DB) retirement plan, many people are finding that they are not on a path to perhaps ever be ready to retire. While most of the focus has been on lower paid, nonhighly compensated (NHCE) workers, the discussion may be more relevant for the higher paid (HCEs) workers, especially those who are not among the very highest paid. When I was growing up, these people were often referred to as the upper middle class. Today, I don't hear that term as often.

Yesterday, I read an article that on its surface would seem to address this issue. It focused on the small employer, small plan world. It laid out a multi-step additive solution:

• Safe harbor 401(k)
• Cross-tested profit sharing
• Cash balance plan
• Nonqualified plan

There is nothing wrong with this solution. In fact, at companies that take this approach, it is likely that full career employees whether they are NHCEs or HCEs will have sufficient retirement benefits to be able to retire with a style of living similar to what they had when they were working. 

That's not bad.

But, as I said, the focus here is on small employers in which the management team (often one or two owners) are earning really substantial amounts of money. While the approach outlined above and in the article may be somewhat optimal, it's not unlikely that with a less optimal approach that these HCEs could retire comfortably.

Before we go on, however, why should we care about the rest of the HCEs -- those people who for the most part have annual incomes in the range of, say, $125,000 to $200,000. They are pretty well paid. What could possibly make it difficult for them?

They do pay more in taxes. It's not unlikely that they will have to fund college educations for their child(ren) as they may make a little too much for significant financial aid to be available. And, as most people aspire to a style of living in retirement at least similar to what they had when they were working, it's going to take a lot more savings for these people to make it to that retirement target. Further, in today's world, with so many employees having a 401(k) plan as their only retirement vehicle, those HCEs who would like to save as much as the financial gurus recommend are just not able to do that in a qualified plan.

Many of these same HCEs have jobs that are not physically stressful. As a result, if they choose to, and if an employer will have them, these people can work well past traditional retirement ages. One might question whether that is good for society. Is it a desirable result? (I'll leave the thinking on that to the reader.)

What can we do? 

Since most people reading this (likely all) will not be legislators, we can't change the law even if that might be a desirable result. As I have said many times, using the 401(k) as a core retirement plan prepares almost no one for retirement. To the extent that companies feel any obligation to their employees, they must do something different.

That different plan should have some particular characteristics:

• It should be affordable to the employer
• The cost of that plan should be relatively stable; that is, volatility should be limited
• The plan should offer annuity and lump sum options to participants when they reach retirement age
• The plan should be easy to understand
• The plan should be easy to administer
• The benefit should be portable since in today's modern workforce, an employee who stays with you for more than five years is the exception, not the norm
• It should benefit the rank and file well
• It should benefit the upper middle class well
• It should benefit the executive group well

Most of the retirement world doesn't seem to want you to know about it, but this plan exists today and it is specifically sanctioned by the Internal Revenue Code.

And, for all of you who are scrambling to learn more, there is plenty of information for the industry insider and the lay person alike. But, if you have more questions, you can always click here.

The Fallacy of the Participant Outcomes Mantra

I read about them virtually every day. One fund manager/defined contribution recordkeeper (vendor for purposes of the rest of this post) or another is concerned about participant outcomes. In other words, the reason that a plan sponsor should choose that particular company is because if they do, employees of that company will be prepared to retire someday.

Balderdash! Fiddlesticks!

Almost all of those vendors are preaching the same things:

• Automatic enrollment
• Automatic escalation
• Target date funds
• Retirement education

These are all great concepts, but they are not actually preparing people for retirement. Let's consider Abigail Assistant who works for Zipper Zoomers. Abby just recently started with ZZ. ZZ has hired Abby with cash compensation of $30,000 per year, based on an hourly rate of about $14.50 per hour. When she interviewed, she asked ZZ if they had medical benefits and a 401 plan (yes, she left off the "k" part). When she learned that they do, she didn't ask about details.

It turns out that ZZ does provide health benefits, but they don't pay as large a percentage of the cost as many other companies do, and their plan is a high-deductible plan. Abby and her husband Anson had already decided that 2016 would be a good year for the Assistant family to have their first child and a quick scan of her Facebook page shows that she will, in fact, be delivering Archibald Assistant later on this year. We also learn from her Facebook page that she plans to take 6 weeks off and then put dear little Archie in daycare.

Abby and Anson are going to have really high health care costs in 2016. But, when she started with ZZ, she got all this paperwork and didn't know what to do with it. She accepted her auto-enrollment at 3% of pay ($900 if she didn't take maternity leave). She also accepted her auto-escalation that will kick her up to a 4%  deferral next year. With ZZ's 2% budget for pay raises, her 2017 pay is expected to be $30,600 resulting a deferral of $1224. So her take home pay reflecting only the deductions for the 401(k) plan has only increased by $276 (600 minus 324) or less than 1%. But Abby and Anson's expenses have gone up far more than that. How will they cope?

Always resourceful, Abby and Anson have the answers. They have credit cards with hefty credit limits. That's a source of funds to pay the bills with. And, they learned that they can borrow against Abby's 401(k) account.

Okay, you all know where this is headed. The Assistants are not on the right track and unless they can get off of it, they will never be prepared for retirement. But, how does this make their vendor wrong?

Auto-enrollment and auto-escalation work for those who can afford it. It doesn't work for those who are living day to day, and sadly today, that seems to be the majority of American families.

In the Pension Protection Act of 2006, Congress claims to have intended to protected pensions. They did take some very positive steps while they were at it though by statutorily legalizing what are known as hybrid plans (cash balance, pension equity, variable annuity, etc.) and while they were at it, statutorily legalizing market return hybrid plans.

If you really want to help to prepare your employees for retirement, these are better vehicles. With modern designs and investment strategies, you can control costs. In fact, you can budget your costs better than you can in a 401(k) plan where the amount of matching contributions that you have to make is dependent on the amount that employees choose to defer.

I've seen all the illustrations and projections. Yes, Polly and Peter Professional who both came out of college and got higher paying jobs and who don't plan to have kids until they have been in the workforce for 10 or more years, bought a house and saved both inside and outside their 401(k) plans will be well-prepared, but for all the Abby and Anson's of the world, the participant outcomes will defy what the vendors are saying.

It's not pretty.

A Less Expensive Way to Provide Better Retirement Benefits -- DB

I've been pushing defined benefit (DB) plans hard lately. I still believe in them. The problem as I have noted is that regulators don't. They have done everything they can to kill them. Many are gone, many remain.

Yesterday, I happened upon a brief from Boston College's Center for Retirement Research. If you want, you can get the full brief here. In the brief, based on 23 years of data, Alicia Munnell, Jean-Pierre Aubry, and Caroline Crawford -- all from the CCRC -- demonstrate that returns on assets in DB plans actually are better than those in defined contribution (DC) plans.

When you combine this with the inability of many to defer enough to their 401(k) plans to get the full company match, you can see why many will never be able to retire well with a 401(k) as their core retirement plan.

For years, though, the cry has been that people understand 401(k) plans, but don't understand DB. But, suppose I gave you a DB plan that looked like a DC plan, provided returns for participants like a particularly well-invested DC plan, provided better downside investment return protection than a DC plan, and cost the employer less than a DC plan. What would you think?

In the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (yes, that was more than 9 years ago), Congress sanctioned what are now known as market return cash balance plans. What they are are DB plans that look like DC plans to participants, provide more and better opportunities for participants to elect annuity forms of distribution if they like, and provide the opportunity for plan sponsors to control costs and create almost a perfect investment hedge if they choose.

Suppose you had such a plan. Suppose to participants looking at their retirement website, the plan just looked like another account any day they chose to look. Suppose the costs were stable. Suppose the plan provided you as a sponsor more flexibility.

That would be nirvana in Xanadu, or something like that, wouldn't it?