Whaddaya know? All this time, I thought it was just retirement plan participants who didn’t understand the fees they were paying. Turns out, according to a recent Spectrem Group study, plan sponsors don’t understand plan fees all that well either — only 45% of plan sponsors fully understand their retirement plan fees, according to the report that evaluated some 600 plan sponsors with assets under management of $10 million to $200 million.
I was surprised, and so was Spectrem Director of Retirement Research Gerry O’Connor, who authored the report. “I expected to see a higher level of understanding and confidence in fees,” he said, Financial Advisor reports. “The numbers indicate that disclosure statements are not effective in creating an understanding of fees and that’s their purpose.”
