• by Tanya Gazdik , November 14, 2010

A nationwide survey from ING reveals one in five workers set their retirement contribution rate based on a "gut feeling."

The survey showed that Americans understand the critical role their workplace retirement plans can play in securing their future, yet they admit they could be contributing a lot more -- and most struggle in setting their contribution rates, according to Rob Leary, chief executive officer of ING Insurance U.S.

To better support Americans as they navigate the retirement landscape, ING has posted a calculator to its Web site to demonstrate the potential long-term financial impact of contribution rate changes, including modest increases. The calculator is available to the public at http://ing.us/ under the header "Give Yourself A Retirement Raise." About 7 million Americans have workplace retirement accounts through their employers at ING, and the company is working with those employers to get the word out to their employees.

"(This) isn't a one-and-done campaign," Leary tells Marketing Daily. "ING has a long-standing commitment to retirement education and advocacy. That's why we created the ING Retirement Research Institute. We think we have identified a critical issue in the way Americans make their retirement plan contribution elections, and we plan on conducting an ongoing educational effort."

For ING and other financial services companies to have a meaningful impact on Americans' retirement prospects, "all of us with expertise and an interest in the outcome -- from investment providers to plan sponsors to financial professional to the personal finance media -- must do a better job of focusing people on the important impact of their retirement plan elections and arming them to make better decisions," Leary adds.

Retirement rate calculators are pretty much a foundation offering for retirement plan providers. "What's new here is that ours is part of an integrated marketing focus -- from research to PR to fulfillment -- on the issue of workplace retirement plan contribution rates," Leary says. "Moreover, we don't believe anyone has made the 'raise' analogy, which we believe to be particularly apt."

ING's research showed that 70% of Americans can't come close to estimating the lifetime value of a 2% increase in their contribution rate. The contribution calculator is designed to show the large financial impact even a small contribution rate increase (1%, 2%, etc.) can have over time.

"In the first few days of the campaign -- and without any real promotion -- we received more than 2,000 visits to the online calculator, almost all of them through people responding to press reports," Leary says. "As our media and plan sponsor efforts heat up, we expect many multiples of those numbers."