By Michael R. Smith
By just about any measure, the 401(k) industry has been a colossal failure for the employers and participants it should be serving.
If you think about it, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise. The majority of 401(k) “service providers”, regardless of their specific capacity, are in businesses that have one major goal: to get assets under management so that they can derive “soft dollar” (read largely invisible) income from those assets. Does that goal tie in with the creation and maintenance of a “successful” employee benefit program that is cost-efficient for employer and participants? Well, the numbers say “no”. Consider this: