The world of automatic 401(k)s is continually changing. Stay current with the latest news.

• Auto 401(k) Enrollment Grabs Reluctant Savers
  So many things in our lives are automated these days. Auto enrollment, auto escalation, and auto rebalancing are increasingly popular.
  Associated Press/New York Times
• Employee Focus: 401(k) Tuneup
  Kiplinger editor Laura Cohn provides some 401(k) tune-up tips including:
  • Make saving automatic. Signing up for an automatic-escalation feature allows you to boost your contributions by 1% or 2% of your salary each year without even thinking about it.
  • Rebalance. While you're at it, request automatic rebalancing, which is typically done quarterly. That will authorize your plan administrator to sell some of your winners and buy some underperforming funds as a way to cash in your profits and bring your investments back in line with your desired asset allocation.
  Kiplinger.com
• Employee Focus: How to Avoid Pitfalls in Automatic Retirement Saving
  On long driving trips, I love to use cruise control. I just set the speed once and stop worrying about how fast I'm going. Of course, I still need to steer, and watch out for other drivers. Automation can be good for retirement saving, too—but only up to a point. Huffington Post
• The Shape of Things to Come for 401(k) Plans
  Here are three more plan features that you are likely to see more of in 2010 and beyond. Employee Benefit News
• Employee Focus: This Simple Switch Could Save Your Retirement
  As tough as times have been for workers trying to save for retirement, there's at least one piece of good news. Increasingly, employers have taken matters into their own hands, by automatically signing up their employees to participate in company-sponsored retirement accounts. It might seem insulting that your employer would sign you up for a 401(k), instead of asking you to do it yourself. But the sad truth is that when it's up to us to take action, many of us don't—and our futures suffer for it. Motley Fool
• How Automatic Enrollment Affects 401(k) Match
  There has been some concern that companies with an eye on their bottom line might reduce their 401(k) match to keep benefit costs the same as they were before all employees were automatically enrolled. A new Employee Benefit Research Institute study that will be released in February should quell that worry. US News and World Report
• Ten Resolutions for DC Plan Sponsors
  Mercer has published a "10 for 2010" checklist of resolutions defined contribution plan sponsors should make in the New Year. On the list is take steps to improve participant savings. How? By using targeted communications, automated plan features—and persistence. Mercer
• Proposals for Retirement Savings
  In his State of the Union speech, the President pushed for employers to allow for automatic direct-deposit individual retirement accounts, or IRAs, for workers who don’t currently have access to existing retirement plans. These initiatives would have a positive effect on the savings rate, says Brigitte Madrian, a professor of public policy and corporate management at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. They would increase the number of lower- and middle-class workers who participate in a retirement savings plan and significantly increase the subsidies that low- and moderate-income workers receive. Smart Money
• Employee Tenure Shows Little Change in Past 25 Years
  Data on employee tenure—the amount of time an individual has been with his or her current employer—show that career jobs never existed for most workers, and still do not. CFO.com
• Annuities in 401(k) plans turn some heads
  Gripped by how the financial crisis drastically reduced some workers’ 401(k) accounts, more employers are taking a fresh look at annuities as a source of retirement income, according to new research. Employee Benefit News
• A Question of Balance: 401(k) Plans Are Being Beefed Up—So Are the Penalties for Failing to Manage Them Well
  It is easier than ever to build a low-cost, high-performing 401(k) plan while simultaneously protecting employers from missteps that could lead to messy and potentially expensive lawsuits. CFO.com
• Thrift Savings Plan preps to implement auto enrollment
  The federal government’s $240 billion Thrift Savings Plan, the nation’s largest retirement plan, is seeing a boost in participation even before the plan starts automatic enrollment next year. Pensions and Investments (Free subscription required)
• Proposals Ask 401(k) Plans to Provide Retirement-Income Projections
  A bipartisan bill would require employers who sponsor 401(k) plans and the like to inform plan participants of the projected monthly income they could expect at retirement based on their current account balance. MarketWatch
• Auto Annuities: Leading the Horse to Water
  The market's recent plunge likely frightened more Americans into a willingness to consider putting at least some of their 401(k) assets in a retirement-income product at retirement. Now, Congress may give them a nudge to go ahead with it."As we bring more people into the system, we will need to address the longevity risk," says David Certner, AARP's Director of Legislative Policy in Washington. Plan Sponsor
• DOL Withdraws Investment Advice Rule
  The U.S. Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) announced the publication of a notice withdrawing the final rule on the provision of investment advice under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act's prohibited transaction provisions. DOL News Release
• Auto-Features Cruise onto Global Stage
  A report card on the globalization of automatic features to defined contribution plans shows that such plans are gaining international acceptance, according to a 33-country survey of DC plan sponsors by Mercer. Employee Benefit News
• Employers are Driving Employee 401(k)s
  Businesses are taking more control of workers' 401(k)s, retreating from the 30-year experiment with employees running their own accounts. Some plan administrators are urging employers to automatically direct as much as 8% of workers' pay into 401(k) savings and build from there. The Wall Street Journal
• Q&A with Retirement Security Project’s William Gale
  Retirement policy expert Gale talks about ways to improve retirement savings prospects for Americans. Targeted News Service
• Commentary: Turn America into a Nation of Savers
  What can be done to turn the country into a saving nation? One approach is to take advantage of recent work in the field of behavioral economics, which has shown that saving works best when it happens automatically. Studies show that many more employees will participate in a 401(k) if they are automatically enrolled and given the choice to opt out than if they must make the affirmative effort to sign up themselves. There is much promise in having savings deposits deducted from paychecks as a matter of course, as they are under 401(k) plans. Christian Science Monitor
• Americans Put Retirement Plans on Autopilot
  Automatic enrollment in 401(k) plans is gaining in popularity, even as the stock-market crash wiped out more than $1 trillion in retirement accounts, two studies show. Automatic enrollment could boost 401(k) participation rates from a national average of about 75% of eligible employees to as much as 95%. TheStreet.com
• Automatic Enrollment Gains Ground for DC Plans
  Defined contribution plans are widely adopting automatic enrollment together with other automatic features designed to boost employee participation and limit the number of decisions employees need to make, a survey by Mercer revealed. Global Pensions
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• 401k Plans Revive from Bear Market Wreckage
  The challenge for America is that millions of workers are more like the grasshopper – without any retirement plan.
  
• Study Shows Growth in 401(k) Plans and Participants
  The good news is that the total of 401(k) plans on the market increased by more than 20,000 in 2008 and over five million participants were added, an increase of 7.6%. The uptick in participants can be attributed, in part, to more employers using automatic enrollment and other auto features with their 401(k) plans.
  
• TSP Reforms Boost Enrollment
  The TSP moved to implement automatic contributions after legislation passed in June (H.R. 1256) to modify certain plan programs. Gregory Long, TSP's executive director, said increases in participation could continue at the current rate or even accelerate into next spring, when the plan implements the legislation's automatic enrollment provision.
  
• Policy Analysis: Improving Savings Incentives for the Poor
  More dramatic increases in the rate of savings have come from changing the design of savings programs. For example, a 2001 NBER study found that automatically enrolling employees in a 401(k) retirement plan-requiring them to opt out of participation instead of opt into the plan-increases employee participation from an average of 35% to 92% percent.
  
• Government Studying Company-Sponsored Automatic IRAs
  The Obama administration's plan to bring retirement accounts to more working people, a concept known as the automatic IRA, is taking shape. Details are being hammered out, but retirement-savings shortfalls are giving the idea momentum despite lingering questions.
  
• Defined Contribution Plans for Nonprofit Organizations
  The challenge for nonprofit organizations and the CPAs who serve them is to understand how new regulations affect 403(b) plans and when a 401(k) might be a better option. Explore the new regulations and the key questions to consider.
  
• Reaching for Savings: Automatic Enrollment in Investment Plans Can Help Millions of Americans Build Wealth
  When companies have adopted this policy of "automatic enrollment," rates of participation in 401(k) programs have soared, especially among lower-income workers. By creating the equivalent of an automatic, national 401(k), we could give all Americans the chance to save and invest for the future, reducing hardship and enhancing their well-being, lowering the long-term burden on the public sector and expanding national wealth.
  
• Auto Enrollment Update: New Federal Hires to Get 5 Percent Match
  New federal hires who formerly had to wait six months to a year to get matching government contributions to their 401(k) plans will soon be eligible to get the government contribution shortly after they go on the payroll. Automatic enrollment in the Thrift Savings Plan for those new employees will begin next spring.
  
• Fidelity: Auto Enrollment Has Biggest Impact On Younger, Lower-Paid Workers
  Data of auto enrolled participants showed that 52% were between the ages 20 and 34 and the majority (56%) of participants that were enrolled automatically made less than $40,000 a year.
  
• For Your Employees: Target Date Checklist
  Nothing beats painstaking inspection. Many people are guilty of spending more time researching their purchase of a flat-screen television than their 401(k) investments.
  
• Breaking Down the Obama IRA
  Tucked into President Obama`s financial regulatory reform legislation still being debated in Congress is a proposal to get more workers saving for retirement. The plan calls for employers to set up mandatory automatic-enrollment IRAs, retirement accounts that allow for tax-deductible contributions.
  
• New IRS Rules Offer Relief to Safe Harbor Plans
  The Internal Revenue Service issued new regulations that would permit employers experiencing a substantial business hardship to suspend or reduce safe harbor non-elective contributions under a 401(k) or 403(b) plan during a plan year.
  
• Changes on the Way for Target Date Funds?
  The Department of Labor and the Securities and Exchange Commission hosted a joint, all-day hearing to determine whether target date funds require increased regulation or disclosure.
  
• President Signs Bill Containing Thrift Savings Plan Auto-Enrollment Feature
  President Obama signed the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act. A part of the bill impacts the federal government's Thrift Savings Plan. New federal employees will be automatically enrolled in the TSP.
  
• Testimony before the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Committee on Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives
  FINRA has teamed with the Retirement Security Project and AARP to establish "Retirement Made Simpler," an effort to increase participation rates and contribution levels among employees whose companies offer 401(k) plans.
  
• Two Cheers for Automatic IRA Enrollment
  Something must be done to encourage employees of small companies to save for retirement.
  
• Young Workers Talk about "Auto-Pilot" Retirement
  Survey indicates young workers find "auto-pilot" retirement plan features highly desirable.