Costco Tests 401(k) Plans For 'Microbusinesses'

"Our small business customer is typically between five and 25 employees, and banks talk about much higher numbers. These businesses are existing Costco business members, including restaurants and professional offices such as real estate, law, and accounting firms. We have lots of firms, including home-office businesses, that have come to us for years to purchase inventory."

Callans sees retirement plans as a logical outgrowth of Costcos other services for small businesses, including payroll processing, credit-card processing and loans.

"We try to identify things they want and need and where we can provide value," says Callans. "Banks and other providers are ignoring the microbusiness market. Thats where we see we can give them something that they want."

GoldK vice chairman Troy Shaver says Costco represents a new segment of distribution for 401(k) plans.

"They provide services to over three million businesses, with a wide variety of products," he says. "This was a way to reach a large number of businesses and presented a good way to test our systems for high volume."

Shaver says it has proven relatively easy to handle such small retirement accounts. "The typical Costco customer is well educated, computer literate and coming online to shop for retirement plans," he says.

GoldK is offering both safe harbor and profit sharing plans to Costcos members. He notes about 75% of those signing up have opted for profit-sharing plans, which offer relatively more advanced investment choices than safe-harbor plans but must meet stricter compliance testing.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Life & Health/Financial Services Edition, August 5, 2002. Copyright 2002 by The National Underwriter Company in the serial publication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as an independent work may be held by the author.