Zaleski is responsible for representing Standish and its
products, product development and business development for global multi-sector
investment strategies, with a special focus on Standish’s opportunistic fixed-income
strategies. He reports to Michael A. Faloon, chief operating officer of
Standish, and David Leduc, Standish’s chief investment officer.
Zaleski joins Standish from The Flatley Company, where he
was a senior portfolio manager. Before that, he was a portfolio manager
for Wellington Management Company LLP, and also had experience with Putnam
Investments, State Street Global Advisors and Fidelity Investments.
Automatic enrollment increases
participation, but it also has a positive effect on other auto features, the analysis finds. Among plans that automatically enroll employees, 69% also automatically increase their contribution rates annually
and 98% use target-date funds, a balanced investment option or managed account as the default investment option. Vanguard’s report is an annual
look at investor trends in the 401(k) and other defined contribution (DC) retirement
plans that the firm administers.
The use of auto features has a
particularly positive impact on low-income, young, and minority workers, who
are showing gains in participation and contribution rates, the report says. By income level, workers earning
less than $30,000 showed the most dramatic gains in participation, when
comparing voluntary enrollment (34%) with automatic enrollment (78%). As income
levels increased, the gain dropped; among the highest paid workers participation from voluntary enrollment was 88% versus 96% from automatic
enrollment.
Other stark gains are seen in
enrollment by race when auto enrollment is implemented. Among African Americans earning less
than $29,999, participation was 35% with voluntary enrollment and 93% with auto
enrollment. Hispanics in the same income category show participation rates of 36% and 94%, respectively. Both demographics
have some economic challenges. (See “Hispanic
Americans Face Saving Challenges” and “Progress,
Hurdles Continue for African Americans.”)
These improvements in savings, and
in increases, in enrollment from the use of auto features will continue to push
upward, says Jean Young of Vanguard’s
Center for Retirement Research and lead author of the report.“We predict over half of Vanguard
participants will be using professionally managed options in five years,” Young tells PLANADVISER
Young adds that “in 2013, 62% of new plan entrants joined through automatic
enrollment,” noting that initially, auto enrollment applied only to new hires in many
plans, but is now increasingly used for eligible nonparticipants in half of
those plans. Employees who joined their plan
through automatic enrollment had an overall participation rate of 82%, compared
with a participation rate of 65% for employees who joined through voluntary
enrollment.
Auto Investment Choices
Among the auto enrollment plans that use TDFs, a balanced fund, or managed
account as the default investment, nine in10 use TDFs.
TDFs have several advantages over
managed accounts or balanced funds, Young says. Among other things, they may
help participants focus on a specific year they might retire, perhaps acting as an engagement device. “TDFs, especially indexed TDFs, tend to have a lower cost
structure,” Young adds. “The advantage of this lower cost structure
compounds over time. Most participants aren’t confident in their ability to
construct portfolios, but they do have a sense of when they plan to retire.”
In 2013, 40% of participants were
solely invested in an automatic investment program, compared with 22% at the
end of 2008. Of those, 31% were invested in a single TDF, another 6% held a
balanced fund, and 3% used a managed account program. These options can
dramatically improve portfolio diversification compared with participants
making choices on their own. With the growing use of TDFs,
Vanguard anticipates 58% of all participants and 80% of new plan entrants
will be entirely invested in a professionally managed option by 2018.
Young states emphatically that professionally
managed accounts help improve outcomes for participants. “Professional
management gives participants consistently better outcomes compared to those
participants who construct their own portfolios,” she says. If left to their
own devices to “do it on their own,” she says, the outcomes can be quite
scattered. “Some do it right, but is it skill, or is it luck?” she asks.
Design for Success
“A quarter of Americans are
estimated to be partially prepared for retirement but need help getting the
rest of the way,” Young says. Another one-quarter are thought to be at risk for not
being able to save enough for retirement altogether. Plan features such as automatic
enrollment, annual savings increases and balanced default investment options
are ways for employers to do more to help both these groups, she suggests.
Young also recommended re-enrollment,
another emerging plan design strategy, in which plan sponsors address portfolio
construction issues by moving participants into investments such as TDFs, balanced funds and managed accounts.
Other findings of "How America Saves 2014"
include:
The average participant account
balance was $101,650 in 2013. Among continuous participants—those with a
balance between year-end 2008 and 2013—the median account balance rose by
182%, reflecting both the effect of ongoing contributions and market returns
during this period. "Balances are now well ahead of the peak levels
achieved prior to the global financial crisis. The effects of the market
decline on retirement savings are now firmly in the past," Young says.
Given the growing focus on plan
fees, more plans are offering a wider range of low-cost index, or passive,
funds. In 2013, nearly half of Vanguard plans offered an index core, which is a
comprehensive set of low-cost index options that span the global capital
markets.
Large plans have adopted this
approach more quickly, resulting in about 60% of all Vanguard participants
offered an index core. Factoring in indexed TDFs with their equity
and fixed-income mix, 84% of participants hold equity index investments.
”How America Saves” is based on an
analysis of Vanguard’s recordkeeping plans. The findings are based on overall
retirement saving and investing behavior of Vanguard’s more than three million
participants, and the report includes supplemental reports about participant
patterns in the defined contribution (DC) retirement plans of 12 industries. The report can be
accessed from Vanguard’s
website.