Employee benefits

Ford Motor Co. of Detroit has made Fidelity PortfolioPlanner, an online retirement tool sold by Fidelity Investments of Boston, available to all Ford employees. PortfolioPlanner helps 401(k) investors with retirement planning and asset allocation decisions, and gives them examples of model portfolios.

First Trust Corp. of Denver has created a program whereby employers can offer employees as many as 2,000 mutual funds from 200 fund families for their 401(k), 403(b) or 457 savings plans. First Trust is calling the new program OptionsPlus.

Mutual fund companies have found it difficult to make major inroads in the small business market, but Fidelity Investments is trying to make headway by selling and administering plans directly over the Internet.

PNC Bank has made several improvements, including the addition of new fund families, to Vested Interest, its bundled 401(k) product.

Faced with growing account balances, 401(k) plan participants are increasingly demanding more help making retirement plan decisions, according to several industry experts.

Prudential Investments is teaming up with BISYS to provide two new retirement plans for small businesses.

Employees are logging onto the Internet and their internal company intranets increasingly to check on their defined contribution plans.

Spectrem Group, a San Francisco-based research and consulting firm, is launching a new study of the market for retirement plans among the estimated nine million U.S. companies with less than 100 employees.