CalSavers reports growth, readies outreach as employer mandate expands to micro employers

CalSavers executive director David Takartz told the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Subcommittee No. 4 on April 24 that the state-run retirement program has more than 550,000 funded saver accounts and about $1.2 billion in assets under management.

The program, formally the California Secure Choice Retirement Savings Board’s CalSavers program, requires employers that do not offer a qualified retirement plan to facilitate payroll-deduction access to a Roth IRA for employees. Takartz said the program has about 58,000 employers actively moving payroll deductions and roughly 58,000 businesses that have uploaded rosters and are facilitating contributions.

CalSavers emphasized the program’s design features: automatic enrollment, automatic 1 percentage-point escalation in contribution rates up to 8% and no employer fees or fiduciary exposure for participating employers. "If the employee decides not to do anything, if they just simply passively allow this to happen, then the savings does occur for them," Takartz said.

Why this matters: CalSavers targets workers without employer plans, often low- and moderate-income earners. The program’s fiscal…