Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the Casey Quirk
partners and team will “transition to Deloitte and operate under the name Casey
Quirk by Deloitte.”
“This combination brings together capabilities to help our clients drive transformational
change across their organizations,” says Joe Guastella, U.S. financial services
consulting leader at Deloitte Consulting LLP. “Together, we are positioned to
work with our clients in responding to the range of quickly emerging, evolving
and complex challenges—including globalization, innovation, competition, and,
most importantly, shifts in investor requirements.”
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A new study from the Investment Company Institute (ICI), “Defined
Contribution Plan Participants’ Activities, 2015,” shows the stock market
fluctuations of the last year have done relatively little to sway the commitment
of current 401(k) account owners.
“Defined contribution (DC) plan participants continued to
contribute to their 401(k)s paycheck-by-paycheck in order to save and invest in
their future during 2015,” researchers explain, “even as stock market prices
changed little over the first half of the year, fell
in the third quarter, and recovered in the fourth quarter.”
According to the ICI research, the vast majority of DC plan participants continued contributing to their
plans throughout the year, “with only 2.6% of DC plan participants stopping their
contributions in 2015, compared with 2.8% in 2014 and 2.7% in 2013.” The
research further shows most DC plan
participants stayed the course in their asset allocations, as stock values were
essentially flat for the year.
“In 2015, 9.7% of DC plan participants changed the asset
allocation of their account balances and 7.6% changed the asset allocation of
their contributions,” ICI says. “These levels of reallocation activity were in
line with reallocation
activity observed over the past several years.”
ICI’s research backs up the idea that the retirement planning
industry is still, in some important ways, on the front-end of the DC plan
revolution. Put simply, the people who will rely primarily on 401(k)s or other
DC accounts as the primary source of retirement income haven’t actually started retiring
yet in big numbers. As such, “only 3.4% of DC plan participants took
withdrawals in 2015, compared with 3.6% 2014 and 3.5% in 2013.”
One positive sign in the data is that “only 1.6% of DC plan
participants took hardship withdrawals during 2015, similar to the past few
years,” and loan activity was slightly lower than in 2014. While trending down,
loans are still too prevalent, ICI warns. “At the end of December 2015, 17.4%
of DC plan participants had loans outstanding, compared with 17.9% at the end
of December 2014. Loan activity continues to remain elevated compared with
seven years ago. At year-end 2008, 15.3% of DC plan participants had loans
outstanding.”
ICI concludes that the coming decade will be a major test
for DC plans—and that significant evolution in both the asset accumulation and
spending phases of retirement should be anticipated.
Additional findings are available on the ICI’s 401(k) resource page.