via Wall Street Journal
Disruption is coming to the 401(k) industry. Led by technology entrepreneurs and backed by venture capitalists, a crop of startups have launched online 401(k) plans in recent months with the aim of bringing robo-style automated investment services to small businesses, many of which offer their workers high-cost 401(k)s or no retirement savings plans at all.
The upstarts are pursuing a large market that has been relatively ignored until recently—a vacuum that has prompted some states to start requiring small businesses to offer retirement plans. Among companies with 100 or fewer employees—a group that employs about 42 million people, or one-third of the private-sector workforce—only 14% sponsor a retirement plan, according to an estimate by the Government Accountability Office.
