Sidebar: Public Impact

Merrill Lynch mailed about 3 million and had only 300-400 phone calls. "They probably were a little overwhelmed with information and didn't focus a lot of attention on it," says Kevin Crain, head of institutional retirement and benefits services, Bank of America-Merrill Lynch. "More work needs to be done evolving the disclosure to make people understand and react."

Great-West, in an assist to sponsors, sent out 350,000 disclosures. "The fact that there were very few calls tells me they're not reading the information," Richman says. "That's too bad. A lot of effort and cost went into this." 

But she can empathize: "If I get a packet of information in the mail that looks like a legal document, I'm probably not going to hunker down in front of TV with a glass of wine and read what turns out to be my participant disclosure!"

 Crain notes: "The fear was that [people] would get scared by the disclosure and not participate in plans. But that has not come to fruition. They are engaging in plans more than ever before."

Upcoming this May: A Dalbar study on participant disclosures.  — JWR