Auto-enrollment and auto-escalation have become the comfort food of the retirement plan industry— warm, reassuring, and often over-relied upon. Plan sponsors love them because they create a sense that the plan is quietly doing the work for you. Participants are defaulted into saving. Deferral rates rise. And on paper, it looks like progress. But anyone who has ever actually managed a retirement plan knows that the moment you start treating auto-features as a self-driving car, you’re on your way to a fiduciary collision. Autoenrollment and auto-escalation remain two of the most effective plan design features created to increase participation and improve participant outcomes. They are widely promoted as the set-it-and-forget-it solution to retirement readiness. But as any experienced plan sponsor eventually learns, nothing in a retirement plan is maintenance-free.
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