401K Ranking

bamahr

Does anyone know where I can go to get a ranking of 401K Provider? Who leads the industry - who is lagging or losing ground?

dchr9203

Try Morningstar.com. We're evaluating providers right now and from what I can gather, Fidelity and Met Life are amond the leaders.

ray a

Principal claims to be number one.

Don D

Are you talking about investment houses or TPAs?

ScorpioHR

We were with Fidelity, was not at all impressed. We switched in January to Manulife.

Don D

I thought you were in Germany hunting for a red bottle. Women!

ScorpioHR

''I thought you were in Germany hunting for a red bottle. Women!''

I am in Germany looking for a red bottle. Yeessh, can't I take a break and cyber play!!!x:'(

ritamcguire

We switched to Principal several years ago and are very pleased with their services. They're very proactive and have great customer service and client representative departments that always respond immediately to any questions we might have.

J Mack

Morning,

You may want to look at American Funds, they are #2 largest in 401K plan assests invested. Their Fund Operating Expense is about 1.5%-1.65% compared to most funds handled through insurance based companies of 3.25%-3.75%. Compared to, again, insurance based plan recordkeepers, they do not charge an annual service fee, which could be a savings of $15-$25 thoursand annually. We have found them to be extremely responsive to our requests.

TN HR

We use T. Rowe Price and are very satisfied. They also were one of the few fund companies found to have been above board on the after hours trading fiasco recently.

My wife's employer uses Fidelity and she really likes it (from an end user's perspective) it is extremely easy to self manage and their netbenefits site has a lot of useful tools offered by morningstar free of charge (you'd have to otherwise subscribe to morningstar in order to use).

Gene

bamahr

Thanks for the information - we are currently with ING and have a TPA. The TPA is terrible - ING is okay. We have it narrowed down to Fidelity and Metlife. Many years ago with were with America's Fund - not too terrible impressed with the service. What a project this has been - a great learning experience but a huge undertaking. Thanks for the information.

J Mack

Just a follow up on MetLife. We recently moved our plan from MetLife basically due to excessive charges of annual admin fees and fund expenses. Insurance companies' basic business is "insurance" not managing retirement plans. Consequently, they do not have the staff to operated as efficiently as someone one like Am Funds, Fidelity, etc. Check this information out closely. As Trustee of our plan, I noticed a couple of years ago that employee's earnings were below where I thought they should be considering market conditions. I will say that they were a great group to work with...they just are not set up to manage retirement plans as you may want. With us, until just last year, our plan assets were not large enough for our plan to be attractive to the larger fund managers like those I mentioned. If yours is, it would pay to reconsider.

E Wart

Four years ago we changed our 401(k). I went through the process and looked very carefully at about 10 different venders (insurance companies, Investment firms, TPA's etc.) We are now with Fidelity and I abolutely LOVE them. They are extremely responsive, have great products, very reasonable, works well with our payroll provider (Ceridian), take very little of my time. I would HIGHLY recommend them to anyone. We have recently gone through an IRS audit and they were great to work with and IRS auditor was very impressed by them. (She is going to use things she learned from them to train the IRS folks.) They do our testing, tax forms, etc. We are paying about 1/10 of what we did with a TPA and Bank that we had before. (Bill is very easy to understand. They don't have a lot of "hidden/surprise" fees that I found that others did that they didn't tell you about.)

The "bidding process" may have something to do with the amount of money you have in your fund. I found that out. Even though we are a fairly small group (217 employees) we have a very good 401(k). I was able to get a lot of folks to respond to my requests.

A few words of advice,
Watch out with Principal (and other insurance companies like Met Life). There is something about "getting out" of their funds that make it almost impossible and you coud be "stuck for life"(due to either the something like an annuity factor or insurance products.) Sometimes they don't do a good job of explaining this. Also their fees were higher and other things. I know folks that are with them and like them and some that hate them. I was warned years ago about their product.
In my other life I had a TPA and American Funds. I liked the funds. However, from what I remember, some of their "hidden fees" were higher than other companies.
No one has mentioned Vanguard. They were a very close second for us. Also very reasonable and very accommodating. I would look at them before I did Met Life or Principal.

We have about 97% employee participation in a manufacturing envirment. This is a benefit I really feel strongly about (and one thing that convinced me to come to this company. ) If anyone wants to discuss Fidelity, the process we went through or anything, please let me know. I would love to offer my "advise and expertise". Ellen (770-981-2803 x 27)

E Wart