Automatic enrollment does a good job getting employees into a defined contribution plan, but a new study argues that sponsors and advisors need to spend more time focusing on improving participants’ savings rates throughout their working years.

According to the latest installment of J.P. Morgan Asset Management’s “Ready! Fire! Aim?” research, which has examined the saving and withdrawal behaviors of defined contribution plan participants for more than a decade, automatic enrollment is only a partial success.

More than half of 25-year-old, currently invested plan participants were automatically enrolled, according to the research, which the authors believe is evidence that “some of these participants may not have invested in the plan otherwise.”

Yet the average contribution rate for automatically enrolled passive participants is “significantly below” the rates for participants who determined their own contributions. Passive participants have an average contribution rate of just 3.3%, according to the research, starting at that level at age 25 and remaining there during all of their working years.

However, passive plan participants were the least likely to borrow money from their 401(k)s, while active but automatically enrolled participants and self-enrolled participants were slightly more likely to take loans.

Those who were automatically enrolled and have been active within their plans contributed an average of 7 percent of their income into the plan, starting at age 25 with a 5.7 percent average contribution, eventually reaching 8.2 percent at age 65.

Plan participants who had to make an active choice to enroll in their plans started at a 5.5 percent contribution rate, reaching 6.3 percent at age 45 and 7.7 percent at retirement.

Only wealthier plan participants making more than $85,000 a year approached the 10 percent savings rate recommended by many industry experts, according to the researchers—yet the median contribution rate for these higher income earners was only 7.5 percent.

Middle-income plan participants earning between $40,000 and $85,000 annually were the most likely to take a loan from their 401(k). These middle-earning participants also contributed, on average, just 5.7 percent of their income per year.

Lower income earners with less than $40,000 in annual salary were the least likely to take loans from their accounts, but when taking loans they tended to take a higher portion of their account balance. They contributed only an average of 5 percent of their income each year.

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