Winners of PLANSPONSOR 401(k) Survey announced

From the perspective of customers, who are the best 401(k) providers?

Three service providers stood out in PLANSPONSOR’s annual Defined Contribution Survey this year: Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Diversified Retirement Corporation, and BMO Institutional Trust Services.  Those providers won the greatest number of service “cups” in the survey’s five main asset classes, based on the evaluations of nearly 7,000 employers of all sizes across the United States.

PLANSPONSOR is the nation’s leading source of retirement plan information for employers.

Other standout rankings were earned (in alphabetical order) by American Trust, Ascensus, DailyAccess Corp., J.P. Morgan, MBM Advisors, Milliman Inc., The Newport Group, TIAA-CREF, Transamerica, and Vanguard.

The survey results — and rankings of 47 providers by their plan sponsor clients — were profiled in a recent issue of PLANSPONSOR magazine. The winners will be honored in New York City on March 29th, 2012 at Pier 60 of the Chelsea Piers.

Quinn Keeler, senior vice president and head of Research at Asset International, Inc., parent company of PLANSPONSOR, said providers are awarded “Best in Class” status based on top-quartile performance in five designations defined by plan size. Providers who won the most “cups” in each asset category were designated this year as Gold, Silver, or Bronze Cup winners.

The top providers in each asset category were: 

Other 401(k) providers cited by PLANSPONSOR across 23 categories can be found at http://www.plansponsor.com/2011_DC_Survey.aspx