For years I have been using Vanguard’s annual “How America Saves” as a reference guide for retirement plan statistics and benchmarks. Today, I am excited to welcome Jeff Clark, a Senior Product Owner in Vanguard’s Strategic Retirement Consulting group and the lead author of How America Saves as well as other retirement research initiatives. As you might expect, this episode focusses on plan design, some statistics, its importance, trends and a few popular topics or ideas that have been discussed where the data does not exactly pan out. I learned a lot, I hope you do as well. 

 

Before we get started, thank you to our listeners who have shared engaged with us on social media. Most of what we post is on LinkedIn, next time you are on there, feel free to share a podcast episode you have enjoyed, or like or comment on a post we create. That goes a long way to helping more people discover the podcast and helps me attract great guests like Jeff. 

 

Guest Bio

Jeff Clark is a Senior Product Owner in Vanguard’s Strategic Retirement Consulting.  He is the lead author of How America Saves as well as other retirement research initiatives.  In addition, Mr. Clark provides strategic and customized analytics designed to help plan sponsors better understand their participants’ behavior and plan design effectiveness.  Mr. Clark joined Vanguard in 1998.  Before Strategic Retirement Consulting, he worked in Participant Services and Compliance Testing and Analysis, assisting plan sponsors with plan design and compliance issues.  Mr. Clark earned a B.A. in economics from Bucknell University.

 

401(k) Fridays Podcast Overview

Struggling with a fiduciary issue, looking for strategies to improve employee retirement outcomes or curious about the impact of current events on your retirement plan? We've had conversations with retirement industry leaders to address these and other relevant topics! You can easily explore over 200 prior on-demand audio interviews here. Don't forget to subscribe as we release a new episode each Friday!