Background

American workers are increasingly reliant on 401(k) plans for their retirement security, and sponsors of 401(k) plans have critical obligations under the Employment Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). To administer these plans, the sponsor—typically the employer offering the 401(k) plan—selects plan features and other characteristics, including the types of investment options offered to participants. To learn more about how sponsors select plan features and oversee plan operations, we conducted a Web-based survey of sponsors in coordination with Plansponsor Magazine (Plansponsor). This e-supplement presents results from our survey and includes a summary of respondent views on proposed legislative changes to 401(k) requirements.

To solicit survey responses, Plansponsor distributed survey notifications through their daily newsletter. Plansponsor also sent a more targeted electronic survey notification to its 2007 Defined Contribution Survey respondents. Using Plansponsor’s distribution estimates, we estimate that the total number of 401(k) sponsors that received notification of our survey to be approximately 22,000. We received 448 usable responses to our survey.

As members of Plansponsor’s subscription list, our survey respondents may have self-selected to be members of a publication that provides information for managers of pensions and 401(k) retirement plans. Consequently, the survey responses presented in this e-supplement are anecdotal in nature and are not necessarily representative of the overall sponsor population.

A more detailed discussion of our scope and methodology is contained in our report: Private Pensions: Fulfilling Fiduciary Obligations Can Present Challenges for 401(k) Plan Sponsors, GAO-08-774 (Washington, D.C.: July 16, 2008). We conducted our review from January 2007 through June 2008 in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards.

Instructions for Viewing This Survey

How to View The Surveys

• Click on the Table of Contents link located in the lower right of this screen. To read to the bottom of the screen, you may need to use your scroll bar on the right side of this screen.
• The first screen in the survey is an introduction and general information that was sent to and viewed by recipients of the survey. There are no survey results to view on this screen. This screen is for information only and you may bypass it by clicking on Next located at the bottom of the screen in the lower right.
• The survey may have links to allow respondents to bypass inapplicable questions (skip patterns). While these were active links during the data collection period, they have now been disabled.
• We analyzed the comments made to questions 19a, 20a and 21. We organized these comments into categories and provide the frequency with which the comments were placed in each category. We also provide a narrative summary of the comments.

How to View the Responses for Each Question

• To view the responses to each question, click on the question number (links to survey questions will look like this: 1., etc.).
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Contact Information?

• If you have questions concerning these data, please contact Barbara Bovbjerg, at (202)512-7215 or Bovbjergb@GAO.GOV