I remember when the chicken littles of the 401(k) business insisted that when fee disclosure regulations were implemented, plan sponsors would terminate their 401(k) plans rather than deal with the headaches of benchmarking fees. As we know, that didn’t happen.
There are already claiming that hundreds of thousands of employers will terminate their 401(k) plan as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic. The sad fact is that there will be many employers that will go out of business, which will necessitate the termination of 401(k) plans. Will it be 50,000? 100,000 or 250,000? Nobody knows. What we do know is that we won’t know until the social distancing and work from home rules end. What we also know is that the 401(k) industry will be around for many years to come and we will navigate the challenges that come from the pandemic and its ending.
