6 honored for work to improve participants' retirement security

Executives of six defined contribution plans were honored Tuesday with Excellence and Innovation Awards at the Defined Contribution West conference in San Diego.

This is the 10th year that Pensions & Investments and the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association have recognized plan executives' best practices to improve plan participants' retirement security.

The winners are:

• Robert Biedeman, director, retirement and financial well-being, The Southern Co., Atlanta, Ga., who encouraged plan participants to take a step-by-step approach to improving financial wellness via a five-week campaign called myMoney Challenge that coincided with National Financial Literacy Month in April. During the campaign, employees took on challenges, such as reading articles or watching videos, for which they then answered questions and became eligible for gift cards.

• Paul M. Colonna, president and CIO, Lockheed Martin Investment Management Co., Bethesda, Md. Mr. Colonna practiced a "less is more strategy" for Lockheed's seven DC plans by removing eight overlapping or little-used investment options, but he also made additions — an actively managed bond fund as well three asset categories to a target-date series. For the former, the goal was streamlining the lineup; for the latter, it was improving diversification and risk adjustment.

• Algretta Hatcher, senior director of retirement, RWJBarnabas Health, Somerset, N.J. To encourage greater participation in a 401(k) plan and 403(b) plan, Ms. Hatcher partnered with Capital Groupto develop an intranet site called MyRetirement, which personalized the needs of three types of employees. After identifying the "avoiders," the "late bloomers" and "motivated seekers," RWJBarnabas Health programmed the site to offer quizzes, articles and videos for each of the three groups.
• Suzanne Mayer, interim executive director and chief benefits officer, State Universities Retirement System, Champaign, Ill. Among the many changes in the SURS 401(a) plan was the adding of a Lifetime Income Strategy as the default option. It's a custom target-date series that enables participants to secure guaranteed lifetime income during the 15 years prior to retirement. Participants can adjust their savings and retain control over their balances, allowing for greater flexibility than the previous offering of a fixed annuity. SURS also streamlined its lineup — to 16 options from 29 — and created a white-label strategy. It reduced the number of record keepers to one from two, which meant a big cut in record-keeping fees. And it launched a deferred compensation plan in February.
• Jeremy Yonan, former senior director, total rewards, Crate & Barrel, Northbrook, Ill. While at Crate & Barrel, Mr. Yonan presided over multiple, concurrent plan changes, including reducing the number of loans a participant could take from a 401(k) plan to one from three and replacing revenue sharing for mutual funds with a per capita fee. The plan now has three ESG funds in the investment lineup, and he added a discretionary wellness credit for employees who take certain financial health steps outlined each year by the company. Mr. Yonan also decided to re-evaluate the plan's qualified default investment alternative, installing a hybrid system in which participants are enrolled in a target-date series until they reach age 45, which then converts to a professionally managed account program that is tailored to individual participants' financial needs and goals.

• Johara Farhadieh, executive director and CIO, Illinois State Board of Investment, Chicago. Ms. Farhadieh supervised a significant change in the state's deferred compensation plan, thanks to a 2019 state law that allows auto enrollment for some participants. This effort was accompanied by merging a money market fund into a stable value fund to streamline the investment lineup and by using a white-label strategy to improve participant understanding of investment options.

An honorable mention was awarded to Ravindra Deo, executive director, Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, Washington. New employees were automatically enrolled at a 5% deferral rate for the Thrift Savings Plan vs. the 3% for existing employees. As one judge noted: Such an increase "wouldn't be that remarkable for a corporate plan, but for it to happen here and be so well-planned and long-planned-for is remarkable."