“We still need some type of human education to bring the tools to life,” Farrington says. “We know that those who report having an advisor are saving at a higher rate and are more likely to have a long-term plan.”
After employer 401(k) plans, savings accounts were the next most popular source for funding retirement income. In fact, at least 90% of the survey respondents did not use pensions, simple IRAs, 403(b) plans or payroll deduction IRAs to save.
Fifty-two percent of those surveyed said they had met with a financial advisor at some point.
“There’s a general knowledge gap,” Farrington says. “Advisors have an opportunity to close that gap.”
Natixis’s research showed that employer matches were an important element in motivating workers to save, with 74 percent of respondents naming matches as their reason for participating in company-sponsored retirement plans.
Farrington said other enhancements to employer retirement plans, like automatic enrollment and automatic escalation, could motivate Americans to save and invest.
“Eighty percent of our respondents say they’re saving less than 10% of their income, and 40% said they were saving less than 5%,” Farrington says. “If you can auto-enroll employees and auto-escalate their savings, it can have a massive impact on making it easy for someone to save more and have a better outcome in the end.”
For the study, Natixis surveyed 1,000 U.S. investors with at least $15,000 in annual income in August 2015.