The Small Business Retirement Savings Challenge

A survey conducted in support of LPL’s advocacy work, asked more than 700 small business owners about their retirement plan offerings or lack thereof. We found that high costs presented a real barrier for owners when it came to offering these benefits to their employees.

"We have a serious challenge ahead of us in addressing the retirement needs of hard-working Americans.  A key to tackling this problem is to make it easier and less expensive for small businesses to provide retirement benefits to their employees. This is an issue that has long been very important to me, and I have introduced legislation to address this problem. I am very happy that this issue is receiving the attention it deserves."

- Congressman Richard Neal (D-MA), Ranking Member, House Committee on Ways and Means

We believe significant advances could be made to address this growing trend, if the federal government, state governments, employers and the financial services industry worked together to (i) educate the American public about the importance of saving, (ii) clarify and promote the many savings vehicles available to investors today, and (iii) encourage policy makers to expand tax incentives to encourage more employers to provide employer retirement plans to their employees. We found that even modest increases in the current tax credit would likely spur small business employers to broaden their retirement plan coverage.

Download the full report to learn more about this problem and what can be done to eliminate the Small Business Retirement Savings Challenge.