Introduce Your Participants to Their New 401(k) Plan Statement
When your 401(k) Pension Plan participants receive their third-quarter statement this month, they’ll notice some changes. With the 401(k) administrative transition, quarterly statements now have a new look and are organized a bit differently, although they deliver the same information.
To help employees get oriented, you can share the single-page flier “A Tour of Your 401(k) Pension Plan Statement.” The flier highlights key areas in the new statement, such as:
- A breakdown of contributions, payments, investment gains/losses and distributions
- A bar graph snapshot showing the participant’s account balance history over time
- A pie chart and breakdown of the participant’s asset allocation, by investment type
- A summary of outstanding 401(k) loan information, if a participant has taken one or more loans
You can find the flier on the 401(k) Administration Transition page for BAs. It’s also available to participants both on their transition page and in the Retire with Confidence module on their homepage.
Loan balances are no longer part of total balance
One change noted in the flier: In accordance with industry standards, when a participant has an outstanding 401(k) loan, the total account balance on the statement will no longer include the remaining loan balance. Instead, this amount is shown as a separate line item within the loan summary section of the statement. This may be a point to share with your participants.
Quarterly statements will also include an investment performance summary and lifetime income information (modeling how a current account balance would translate into monthly income if the participant retired today); these are not shown in the flier.
Accessing statements
401(k) statements will be mailed in mid-October to participants who have not chosen electronic delivery. Those who have “gone paperless” will receive an email notification to access their statement online. Delivery preferences can be changed at cooperative.com > My Benefits, under Profile Preferences.
Statements will be available to all participants in the new 401(k) participant portal; they can log into cooperative.com > My Benefits and click Manage My 401(k) Account.