Goldman, BlackRock's 401(k)s Make Rank

Investment analytics provider BrightScope released its second annual rankings list of New York City area companies that have 401(k) plans with more than $100 million in assets.

A number of financial service providers made the list including OppenheimerFunds, Inc., Goldman Sachs Group, Inc., and Nomura Securities, all earning 85 points, were ranked 12th, 13th and 16th respectively. Meanwhile, BlackRock Inc., Alliance Bernstein L.P. and Morgan Stanley & Co. Inc. all earned 84 points were ranked 19th, 22nd and 25th respectively.

Topping the New York list was Deloitte LLP, with its Profit Sharing Plan, which earned a score of 90 points.

The list analyzes more than 200 elements of a pension plan, including company contributions, fees and vesting schedules, and then crunches out a rating score via a proprietary algorithm.

Mike Alfred, co-founder and chief executive officer of BrightScope, told SourceMedia that the success of these 25 plans was due to a number of factors such as company profitability. For example, at a profitable financial services company with highly paid employees, it’s important that the company can drop in more money because their employees have high expectations. More money leads to more employees caring about the plan, and this leads to better results.

The rankings have alerted BrightScope to a number of trends, according to Alfred, including the rise in scores for plans that they track over the past few years.

BrightScope also does rankings of the top 30 plans in the country with over $1 billion in assets. Area ratings lists are developed for such regions as San Francisco, Dallas-Forth Worth and Phoenix.

“When we launched the company in 2009, the goal was to see if anyone would care,” Alfred said. “The vast majority of companies are aware of the data and use them in some way, even in discussions at their investment committees.”

Tommy Fernandez writes for Money Management Executive.

 

 

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