The client tells you he is going to start adequately saving enough for retirement but he never seems to get around to it. Plan sponsors say more and more people are participating in their defined contribution plans, but their average balances aren’t nearly good enough for workers to pay for retirement.

These are some of the failings of the retirement savings industry discussed Tuesday in Manhattan at a conference sponsored by Voya Financial. Voya executives said in a statement that most retirement plans are missing the mark because people often don’t designate a high enough percentage of earnings to fully fund retirement.

“New data shows that 82% of retirement plans are not on track to meet their investors’ long-term savings needs,” said the statement. The number is neither scary nor surprising given how plans are now generally presented to plan participants, who understand they need to save more for retirement just as they often understand that they need to cut down on junk food and exercise more. Still, although they accept commonsense ideas, they are often slow about acting on them, with many running out of time to effectively fund retirement.

“It is a looming economic and societal challenge,” said Alain Karaoglan, chief operating officer at Voya.

“We have a crisis for participants both in terms of process and outcomes,” said CEO Charles Nelson.

What’s To Be Done?

The majority of retirement plan participants, they warned, need prodding.

As part of that effort, Voya executives have announced the formation of the Voya Behavioral Finance Institute for Innovation. “We are going to come up with retirement plans that help them,” Karaoglan added.

The institute will work with behavioral economist Shlomo Benartzi. The institute, he noted, must find programs that will digitally “nudge” people to save enough.

Benartzi said Voya has tried pilot retirement programs with some 5 million people in which they are shown how their retirement contributions do or don’t move them closer to retirement goals. He suggested that the retirement industry should rethink how it administers programs.

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