With Roth Use Set to Grow, Vanguard Stresses Participant Education

The firm’s retirement head says its plan sponsor clients are ready for implementation, but participants can use more information.


The “Rothification” of retirement savings will gain steam in 2024, as the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 mandated Roth catch-up contributions for those over the age of 50 who make more than $145,000 a year.

But implementation, while mandatory, will still need plan adviser consultation and education for plan sponsors to understand—and communicate—the potential benefit of post-tax Roth saving to participants, according to David Stinnett, a principal in strategic retirement consulting at the Vanguard Group.

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“There are advantages to using a Roth, but we need to continue to educate participants on those advantages, depending on their personal situation,” Stinnett says.

SECURE 2.0 has multiple provisions that boost Roth 401(k) and individual retirement account savings, which are funded with post-tax income. Those include the 2024 mandatory Roth catch-up for high-income earners; a Roth option for employer matching contributions if the contributions are fully vested; and, also beginning in 2024, participants with Roth accounts are no longer subject to pre-death required minimum distributions.

As of the end of 2022, 80% of plan sponsors were already offering Roth contributions, according to Vanguard commentary published in July. Meanwhile, 17% of participants contribute to Roth accounts, a significant jump from 2018, when just 11% were contributing to the savings vehicle, according to the researchers.

David Stinnett.

Retirement industry groups have been lobbying for more time for Roth regulations to take hold, noting the recordkeeping and administrative issues that arise from both making Roth contributions available and sorting out payroll processing with the $145,000 threshold in mind.

Stinnett says the plan sponsors his team works with are prepared to implement Roth options, but the bigger push is around education and communication.

“Our role now is to discuss the benefits for participants,” he says. “There are a number of tax benefits that can come from Roth savings, but it will depend on the individual.”

Vanguard’s report noted that having a sizable Roth balance can provide tax diversification and lower overall tax liability by reducing the need to draw down taxable accounts such as 401(k) and traditional IRA savings accounts.

The authors also noted, however, that Roth options are not the best solutions for every saver. Some plan participants may benefit from pre-tax accounts, including those whose income and tax rate are both likely to be reduced in retirement or who have only temporary high income.

Whatever a participant’s situation for participants, plan sponsors should be providing targeted communications about Roth options to their employees, Vanguard noted.

“Once the Roth option has been added to a plan, sponsors should consider how to educate participants about the benefits of Roth contributions,” the report’s authors wrote. “Given the tax intricacies of Roth accounts, some participants find them difficult to fully comprehend. Because of this, a targeted, long-term approach to communication often works best.”

Beyond Roth options, Stinnett sees further benefits for participants coming out of SECURE 2.0 to improve overall financial well-being.

Stinnett notes that emergency savings programs are already available for participants and can be a good vehicle to prevent savers from making more costly loan distributions or outright withdrawals. Further integration will depend on advisers and plan sponsors being more deliberate in adding emergency programs to plan design, he says.

Meanwhile, student loan matching has potential to further help participants and is a subject of discussion with plan sponsor clients, Stinnett says. But getting recordkeepers and plan sponsors to put that process in place will take time.

“SECURE 2.0 came with a lot of excitement and brought good ideas to the table,” he said. “Implementation, as with most legislation, will take time.”

Plan Adviser Industry Needs to Adapt to Get Younger, More Diverse

A panel of top advisers discusses how to shake up the typical hiring channels, and even how the industry is talked about, to cultivate the next generation.

 


The retirement plan advisement industry needs to modernize its approach to recruiting, communicating, and even its salary structure to cultivate the next generation of advisers, according to a group of top retirement plan advisers speaking Thursday on a PLANADVISER webinar focused on team building.

The retirement industry is facing a demographics issue in part because it is an aging profession that must serve the needs of all generations, Kim Cochrane, director, client services, HUB International MidAtlantic, said on the webinar.

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“Really matching cultures, and matching generations, is crucial [for the advisement industry],” Cochrane said. “I think big picture, we have to get new, young people into this business. We need to grow our business and community, and it’s just a little challenging sometimes to do that.”

It’s not just the participant pool that is younger and more diverse, noted Chuck Williams, CEO and founder, Finspire LLC, but plan sponsor retirement plan committees as well.

“My opinion is, the [diversification of the industry] is going to happen no matter what,” he says. “It started out maybe more altruistic. But this is now a business decision.”

Williams, who teaches retirement planning and employee benefits at Northwestern University, notes that many people have an outdated view of the financial profession, thinking it is “like Wolf of Wall Street or something like that,” with a high intensity, highly sales-driven atmosphere. To counteract that view, Williams brings to class certified financial planners to discuss what their jobs are really like.

“They show students that there are many different paths to get into this field,” he says. “We should be looking at it differently than when we came into the field and who was successful at that point.”

Having increased diversity in the field will also help to attract more new recruits, noted Bob Patton, managing director, SageView Advisory.

He said that SageView has employee resource groups to help create communities where younger employees can find mentorship opportunities. Those groups are also good vehicles for bringing in new employees, as the members may be better at cultivating interest among people who have not traditionally been represented at advisory firms and encouraging them to apply.

“We can’t just hire people like us,” Patton said. “We need to expand even out of our comfort zone a little bit and take chances on different personalities. We all know that not everybody connects with clients the same way.”

Changing Things Up

Hub’s Cochrane suggested that the industry should shift away from commission-based salaries that relies on sales. She believes the new workforce is looking for a secure salary that can provide a steady, nine-to-five job for those who want to work hard. But those that may also have families and other interests that make “going to happy hour or going golfing” for work less attractive.

“We have to change our industry,” she said. “We need to rethink this.”

Cochrane also believes the industry should embrace those who aren’t coming out of universities, but can be from any kind of background. That could be from another profession, such as teaching, or a barista at Starbucks who has a good personality and can connect with people—a key trait in the financial services field.

“Learning the business, that’s the easy part—but you can’t learn how to be a good human or good connector [with other people],” she says.

Williams said that Finspire puts curiosity at the top of its list for new employees. He noted that his firm can teach someone about how a Safe Harbor retirement plan works, but it’s harder to teach curiosity and interest in a subject.

“We’re looking for more of a ‘culture add’ than a ‘culture fit,’” he says. “We want to add something in that we don’t have; someone with a little bit different of a background.”

Patton of Sageview noted that internship programs are good way to “grab people when they are young” to get them into the business, whether they are finance majors or not.

Different Paths

The panelists also discussed the pros and cons for young advisers in being either with a larger investment advisory, common due to the aggregation of the industry, or with a smaller shop.

At smaller independent firms, employees can wear different hats and learn a variety of roles quickly, said SageView’s Patton.  On the flip side, larger firms can provide opportunities in specific areas of interest and even give someone the opportunity to work on a team built around that focus area.

“People are part of a team, they can see a career path, they can see title changes,” Patton said. “They can come in and say I want to spend my career here….and being a national team allows for that.”

Cochrane noted that she was part of a smaller organizations that joined aggregator Hub; she saw advantage in the chance for people to move into different roles.

“You brought someone in as an educator, but they really want to do wealth management—you can say that’s great, let’s do that,” she says. “Having all of these different places for people to find what they love best, and all this opportunity, is really amazing.”

Overall Cochrane noted, the retirement plan advisement industry has to modernize and diversify to match the world that it’s seeking to serve.

“We need to be a lot sexier, we need to be a lot more fun, and, you know, look in different places to add our employees,” she said. “We need to really be cognizant that it’s a diverse world, and our industry is not very diverse. We have a long way to go way, and we have to really be actively working on that.“

 

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