This week we chat with Ida Rademacher, Vice President and Director of Aspen’s Financial Security Program, and Karen Andres, Director of Policy and Market Solutions for the Program. We’re hitting four hot topics: the power of automatic enrollment. What happens when we re-imagine retirement? Innovation among our financial services providers. And maybe most importantly, the call for a national strategy on financial inclusion.

Determining the “default” investment for savers who do not make a decision about where to direct their contributions is a weighty decision. The downside of putting the money into investments that carry more risk, and a greater potential for loss, is obvious. But parking the contributions in a “safe” investment with lower risk means participants’ accounts may not grow sufficiently to provide significant income security in retirement. Increasingly, target-date funds (TDFs) have become a popular solution.

Grant Boyken shares current best practices related to automatic enrollment and automatic escalation in the retirement savings space — and especially for state-facilitated programs.