Employee benefits

John Hancock Financial Services has launched a television campaign, titled “You Are Not Alone,” that Hancock’s chief marketing officer, David Longfritz, says taps into the frustrations, as well as the resilience, of American investors now.

The independent broker-dealer network National Planning Holdings, Inc. has named Frank Hayn vice president of retirement plans.

A shift in American investor appetite towards investment outcome, as opposed to relative return, is changing their buying behavior, according to research published by Casey, Quirk & Associates and the eVestment Alliance.

PIMCO and the Vanguard Group received the highest favorable ratings from prospective institutional investors amidst leading asset managers, according to a new study released by Cogent Research.

For many planners with high-net-worth minimums for their clients, target-date funds don’t make sense for a variety of reasons. But in the right circumstances, they can be helpful tools.

The top concern was over the quality and selection of investment options in traditional plans, with over half of RIAs surveyed naming this as their chief issue.

Thanks to this strong yearly start in stocks, the typical plan’s funded status reached 74.1%, according to BNY Mellon Asset Management.

The vast majority of executives responsible for 401(k) plans at their companies are feeling less confident that employees are financially prepared for retirement, according to a survey by Deloitte.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch said that it saw increased 401(k) savings through its plan sponsors both in the fourth quarter and 2011 year, signaling a positive outlook for the tweaks it has made to its offerings and confidence in the overall economy.

The U.S. Labor Department has removed a controversial part of its proposed 401(k) fee disclosure rule that would have required retirement plan providers to create a summary document, or "roadmap," of all their fees for employers.

Schwab Retirement Plan Services already serves 1.5 million workers saving for retirement, but hopes that its new Schwab Index Advantage service will increase participation even more by demystifying the 401(K) saving process.

Total retirement assets were $17.0 trillion as of Sept. 30, down 7.5% from a record high of $18.4 trillion as of June 30, the Investment Company Institute said Wednesday, attributing most of the decline to the 13.9% decline in the S&P 500 Index in the third quarter. Assets might have declined even further were it not for automatic contributions to 401(k)s, the ICI said.

After a decade marked by two severe bear markets, 401(k) investors have adopted a more balanced approach to their portfolios, according to a report released Wednesday by the Investment Company Institute and the Employee Benefit Research Institute.

The 11th quarterly Allstate-National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll found that near-retiree Baby Boomers have pushed back initial plans to retire at age 60, to 66. Additionally, 68% of Baby Boomers expect to work in some form after retirement, the survey of 1,200 Americans found. Only 11% of current retirees currently work.

Despite the historic equity market decline of 2008-2009, most 401(k) participants earned positive investment returns in the five-year period ended 2010, according to Vanguard. In fact, the average return was 3.76% a year, not including the impact of continued contributions.

The new Department of Labor 401(k) fee disclosure rules that go into effect on April 1 will radically shake up the industry, according to Tom Gonnella, senior vice president of corporate development at Lincoln Trust, who gave six predictions for the defined contribution industry in 2102.

Walmart, the world’s largest private employer, and Merrill Lynch, without admitting to wrongdoing, have agreed to pay $13.5 million in a class-action lawsuit accusing them of breaching their fiduciary duty to two million past and present Walmart workers. The suit was settled in Kansas City federal court.

Forty-six percent of Americans surveyed by Fidelity Investments cite saving more as their No. 1 financial resolution for 2012, and among this group, the median savings target is $2,400, up from $1,200 last year.

Since the financial crisis and Great Recession, 401(k) plans have undergone dramatic shifts. To foster diversification and greater participation, 51% of participants in Fidelity Investments' 401(k) plans are in automatically enrolled plans, up from 16% five years ago, and 73% of the plans use target-date funds as the default, up from 11% in 2006. In the past year, 64% of sponsors changed their investment lineup-up dramatically from 20% in 2008.

Since the financial crisis and Great Recession, 401(k) plans have undergone dramatic shifts. To foster diversification and greater participation, 51% of participants in Fidelity Investments' 401(k) plans are in automatically enrolled plans, up from 16% five years ago, and 73% of the plans use target-date funds as the default, up from 11% in 2006.