Americans continued to save for retirement through defined contribution (DC) plans during the first half of this year, according to the Investment Company Institute’s “Defined Contribution Plan Participants’ Activities, First Half 2017.”
The study tracks contributions, withdrawals, and other activity, based on DC plan recordkeeper data covering more than 30 million participant accounts in employer-based DC plans.
The latest recordkeeper data indicate that nearly all plan participants continued contributing to their plans in the first half of 2017. Only 1.6% of DC plan participants stopped contributing during this period.
Other findings include:
- Most DC plan participants left their asset allocations unchanged. In the first half of 2017, only 6.8% of DC plan participants changed the asset allocation of their account balances, and only 4.3% changed the asset allocation of their contributions.
- Withdrawals from DC plans remained low in the first half of 2017, as in 2016. In the first half of 2017, 2.2% of DC plan participants took withdrawals, about the same share as in the first half of 2016. Only 0.9% of DC plan participants took hardship withdrawals during the first half of the year, similar to the first half of 2016.
- DC plan participants’ loan activity was little changed at the end of the first half of 2017. At the end of June 2017, 16.7% of DC plan participants had loans outstanding, compared with 16.6% at the end of the first quarter of 2017. Loan activity continues to remain higher than at the end of 2008, when 15.3% of DC plan participants had loans outstanding.
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