EBRI & ICI Update Annual 401(k) Stats

Bird's-eye view in Florida

The Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) and the Investment Company Institute (ICI) just released at the end of 2012 the results of their annual look back at the prior year's (2011) retirement data. The EBRI-ICI project encompasses some 24 million 401(k) participants in 64,000+ plans, with $1.4 trillion in assets.  

EBRI-ICI reports that the average account balance is $58,991, which was down slightly from 2010. Four in ten participants had account balances less than $10,000, while only one in six had more than $100,000. About three-quarters of participants had lower account balances than the average. The report looks at other data as well, including asset allocation and plan loans. 


EBRI and ICI anticipate digging deeper into the data in 2013, particularly focusing on what they term "consistent" participants. These are individuals who have been in a 401(k) plan for a given, longer period. This will be very helpful as it will give a better perspective on the success of savings or lack thereof. The current research appears to limit itself to data from current employment, so account balances may be lower for those who have recently changed jobs. Similarly, those starting out in their careers naturally will have lower balances, so a plan with a higher representation of this demographic may appear to have lesser assets. This future analysis should prove to be very interesting. The latest report is available on both the EBRI and ICI websites.

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