Less than 60% of salaried Americans have access to an employer-sponsored retirement plan, according to a T. Rowe Price survey.

That was just one of the challenges facing the current retirement landscape that was discussed at the Baltimore-based financial giant’s mid-November press briefing.

Retirement-plan access is partly hampered by gender and racial inequities, said Rachel Weker, T. Rowe Price’s senior retirement strategist, who was one of four expert panelists. Retirement-plan participation rates are lower among Black and Hispanic workers than among their white counterparts.

The good news, said Jessica Sclafani, T. Rowe Price’s senior defined contribution strategist, is that initiatives are underway to get more workers into retirement savings plans. For instance, pooled employer plans (PEPs), a type of multiple employer plan (MEP) that was created by the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019 (SECURE Act), allow employers of different types and sizes to band together to offer a retirement plan.

In addition, she said, 16 states sponsor a retirement savings program for private sector workers.

Michael Doshier, senior retirement strategist at T. Rowe Price, noted that MEPs and other “aggregated solutions” that pool resources to set up retirement plans are a large and growing trend.

Michael Davis, the firm’s head of defined contribution specialists, who moderated the panel, said that some two-thirds of the firm’s more than $1.2 trillion in assets under management are “retirement related.”

Beyond plan access is the question of plan adequacy, said Weker. Even among those with access to retirement savings accounts, many are coming up short. They just aren’t saving enough to meet their retirement goals. Again, there are great disparities by gender and minority status, she said; women and people of color tend to be far behind white men in their retirement savings levels.

“Thirty-eight percent of white workers started saving for retirement before the age of 30, whereas for Black workers that number is as low as 18%,” said Weker. The impact of delaying the start of asset accumulation is “not insignificant."

Why people fail to save enough for retirement is mostly related to them having other priorities. One-third of respondents in a recent survey acknowledged that they weren’t saving enough. “This is not an awareness issue,” said Weker.

Among those who knew they needed to be saving more, 25% reported that they were paying down debt, and 40% said they were saving for nonretirement priorities such as education or a home purchase. “Those competing priorities disproportionately impact minorities and women,” she said.

To close the gap, Weker suggested that the industry should look more closely at addressing barriers related to gender and race. Sclafani agreed, noting that employer interest in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in recruitment, hiring, promotions, and overall operations was already starting to enter the retirement benefits space.

The conversation pivoted to how retirees and near-retirees manage decumulation—that is, how they budget their income needs, spending, and drawing down of assets. Are they financially “healthy” in retirement?

“Individualized variables need to be taken into consideration,” said Kim DeDominicis, T. Rowe Price’s target date portfolio manager. For instance, she said, some people need a set level of retirement income while others demand more flexibility. Clients must be able to understand their options and the trade-offs of choosing one path over another. To help pre-retirees maintain financial wellness, plan sponsors should provide personalized attention.

Doshier said there is growing interest among plan sponsors in qualified default investment alternatives (QDIAs), which are investment services employers can use to provide retirement account management to their employees. QDIAs must contain a mix of investments that take into account each participant’s age and expected retirement. In general, these are either target-date funds, which are structured to maximize returns by a specific date, or professionally managed accounts that typically focus on high growth stocks in the early years and more conservative securities as retirement approaches.

Another option is a “dynamic or dual QDIA,” said Sclafani, which she defined as a retirement savings vehicle that starts as an accumulation-oriented target-date fund, but then, when the participant reaches a certain age, account balance, or other threshold, can convert to a managed account to help with ongoing decumulation needs.

“When the participant retires or reaches a certain threshold,” she said, “they benefit from a managed account that provides a more customized experience than a target-date fund can.” That’s necessary, she added, because “people approaching retirement do tend to have more complex financial lives.”

The final topic was the investment landscape going forward.

“It is likely we will continue to face economic uncertainty and market instability,” said DeDominicis. This volatility can only complicate retirement decisions, she warned. Plan sponsors and retirement savers alike need to think about designing portfolios that are well positioned for economic unpredictability.

“Diversification,” she concluded, “is more crucial than ever.”