Lack of Communication Between Employers and Their Employees Threatens Future Retirement Security

Business Wire, Feb 6, 2007

Steps that employers can take to help better communicate with their employees and provide a retirement plan that best helps them prepare for the future include:

* Initiating ongoing dialogue with employees on the possible opportunities for improving their retirement plan -- including both information on investment choices and educational offerings

* Reviewing the Pension Protection Act with their financial adviser, benefits consultant, third party administrator or retirement plan provider to learn which provisions may help increase the effectiveness of their plan

* Consulting with their retirement plan provider to make sure that their company and its employees are taking full advantage of their educational offering

"As saving for retirement becomes more challenging, both employers and employees need to take the initiative to understand each other better and bridge this perception gap--not only during annual enrollment meetings, but throughout the year," said Collinson. "More communication and engagement can create positive change in the workplace."

About Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies

The Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies ("The Center") is a collaboration of experts assembled by Transamerica Retirement Services2 to promote public awareness of emerging trends surrounding retirement security in the United States. The Center's research emphasizes employer-sponsored retirement plans, issues faced by small to mid-sized companies and their employees, and the implications of legislative and regulatory changes. For more information about The Center, please refer to www.TA-Retirement.com/TheCenter.> About Transamerica Retirement Services

Transamerica Retirement Services ("Transamerica"), a marketing unit of Transamerica Financial Life Insurance Company and other of its affiliates, designs customized retirement plan solutions to meet the unique needs of small to mid-sized businesses. Transamerica Retirement Services ranked as a top-five plan provider3 in a recent PLANSPONSOR([R]) magazine DC Survey and has more than 14,5004 retirement plan clients totaling more than $14.15 billion in assets. For more information about Transamerica, please refer to www.TA-Retirement.com.

Eighth Annual Transamerica Retirement Survey:

About the Survey

Transamerica Retirement Services conducted a national survey of U.S. business employers and workers regarding their attitudes toward retirement. The research emphasizes employer-sponsored retirement plans, issues faced by small to mid-sized companies and their employees, and the implications of legislative and regulatory changes. To this end, Harris Interactive was commissioned to conduct the Eighth Annual Retirement Survey for Transamerica Retirement Services. There are two components to the survey: Employer and Worker. Where appropriate, questions were tracked and some new questions were added to investigate new topics of interest.

Employer Survey Component

This part of the survey was conducted by Harris Interactive on behalf of Transamerica Retirement Services via telephone within the U.S. among 659 owners/heads of small businesses and benefits decision-makers in larger companies, using a nationally representative random sample. Respondents met the following criteria: business executives who make decisions about employee benefits at their company, must be at a company that employs 10 employees or more, and not work for a government, education or not-for-profit organization. Interviews averaged 18 minutes in length and were conducted between July 25 and October 10, 2006. Data were weighted to ensure that each quota group had a representative sample based on the number of companies in each employee size range. With a pure probability sample of 659, one could say with a 95 percent probability that the overall results would have a sampling error of /- 3.8 percentage points. Sampling error for data based on sub-samples would be higher and would vary. However, that does not take other sources of error into account. This online survey is not based on a probability sample and therefore no theoretical sampling error can be calculated.