Retirement - According to the 16th annual Retirement Confidence Survey, a large majority of Americans expect to enjoy a comfortable retirement but many have not taken the actions needed to turn their aspirations into reality and face the prospect of having to work far longer than they expect.

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The 2006 survey which was released April 4, showed many Americans' retirement expectations full of holes. As an example, many have accumulated only modest retirement savings, underestimate the share of their pre-retirement income they are likely to need in retirement, and have made no estimate of how much they will need to live comfortably once they retire.

24% of survey respondents claimed they are confident they will have enough money to live comfortably in retirement and another 44% said they are somewhat confident. The total of more than two-thirds (68%) of current workers expressing some level of confidence in their retirement prospects was statistically unchanged from a year ago, but came in the face of a recent series of widely publicized announcements of companies ending or limiting their traditional pension programs and retiree health promises, a development that could have affected retirement confidence.

Many workers are counting on employer provided benefits in retirement that are increasingly unavailable. Only 40% of workers indicate they or their spouse currently have a defined benefit plan, yet 61% say they are expecting to receive income from such a plan in retirement.

Recent research has found that when a traditional pension is frozen, many workers in the pension are unlikely to get an equal benefit value contributed to their 401(k) plan,' said Jack VanDerhei, a Temple University professor, EBRI fellow, and co-author of the Retirement Confidence Survey. 'Each case is different, but it?s clear that people currently working should factor into their retirement planning the long-term trend away from traditional defined benefit pensions and toward 401(k)-type plans.' He added: 'We find there are a lot of people who need to be saving more than they are, if they hope to be able to afford a comfortable retirement.'

The Retirement Confidence Survey (RCS), begun in 1991, is the country's most established and comprehensive study of the attitudes and behavior of American workers and retirees toward all aspects of saving, retirement planning, and long-term financial security. Survey results appear in the April 2006 EBRI Issue Brief, available at ebri.org. The survey is sponsored by EBRI and Mathew Greenwald & Associates, a survey research firm, and is underwritten by more than two dozen other organizations, including CitiStreet.

Here are some survey results that suggest Americans' retirement shortfalls:

Saving: More than two-thirds (68%) of current workers say they and their spouses have accumulated less than $50,000 in retirement savings. Not surprisingly, this modest level of saving is more prevalent among younger workers: 88% of workers ages 25-35 have less than $50,000 saved for retirement, compared with 52% of workers ages 55 and older.

Health care costs: Nearly 6 in 10 (58%) of current workers say they and their spouses do not expect to receive any health insurance from their employers when they retire. Recent EBRI research showed that individuals age 55 who live to age 90 would need to have accumulated $210,000 (by age 65) to pay for insurance to supplement Medicare and out-of-pocket medical expenses in retirement, far more than all but about 10% of workers currently have saved for all retirement expenses. Not surprisingly, older workers are more likely to have the retirement assets to pay those costs: 25% of workers age 55 and older say they have accumulated more than $250,000 in retirement savings, compared with 12% for those 45-54 and 4% of workers ages 25-34.

Longevity: Two-thirds (66%) of current workers think they have some chance that they will live until age 90, or spend 25 years in retirement, assuming they retire at age 65. Furthermore, 41percent of current workers think that they have some chance of living until at least age 95, or 30 years of retirement, assuming retirement at age 65. However, 58% of current workers think they will have less than 25 years of retirement and another 19% are unable to estimate how long their retirement will last. These findings suggest many workers may not be planning and saving enough to finance the full amount of time they expect to spend in retirement, thereby increasing the odds that they will outlive their retirement savings.

Planning: Nearly 6 in 10 current workers (59%) said they hope to have a retirement standard of living equal to or higher than in their working years. But when current workers were asked if they or their spouse have calculated how much money they will need to retire comfortably, nearly 6 in 10 (58%) said no. And of those who did do a retirement calculation, 8% said they arrived at an answer by guessing.

In addition, the 2006 RCS found strong support for automatic enrollment in a 401(k) plan for new workers so as to boost participation in a retirement plan: About two-thirds of employed workers favor automatic enrollment (69%), with a slightly smaller amount (65%) supporting automatically increasing the percentage of salary contributed when a pay raise is received. Plan participants and non-participants were equally likely to favor each of these automatic features. About half of all workers (48%) reported they receive employer-provided retirement education; of those, almost a third (29%) report modifying their retirement planning as a result of the material they receive and are more likely to do a retirement needs calculation.

CitiStreet, one of the largest global benefits delivery firms in the United States, is headquartered in Quincy, Mass. CitiStreet has 3,000 employees at offices in Somerset, N.J., Jacksonville, Fla., Lewiston, Maine, Boston and field offices around the nation. It also has a division, CitiStreet Australia, with offices in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne. CitiStreet serves more than 9 million participants and administers approximately $200 billion in assets in the United States for defined contribution, defined benefit and health and welfare plans of corporate, government, health care, Taft-Hartley and not-for-profit organizations. It also serves about 1 million participants and administers about $9 billion in assets outside the United States. CitiStreet is a 50/50 joint venture between State Street Corp. and Citigroup. For more CitiStreet information, visit the Web site at citistreetonline.com.

CitiStreet is providing full defined contribution and defined benefit administration, along with health and welfare services to American Family Insurance, the nation's third-largest mutual property and casualty insurer, it was announced today.

The agreement marks an expansion of the companies' long-standing business partnership; CitiStreet has provided defined contribution benefits outsourcing services to American Family Insurance since 1994.

Under the new agreement, CitiStreet will continue to perform administration for American Family's defined contribution plans, and add administration services for the defined benefit and health and welfare plans. Services also include a contact center and communications and education for the 8,300 employees in the plan.

Sandy McCarthy, CitiStreet president of Retirement Services, noted that the service for American Family provides defined contribution and defined benefit administration on a single platform, along with integrated health and welfare services.

This new and adaptable technology allows CitiStreet to offer a Total Retirement Outsourcing (TRO) solution to a broader array of clients; previous industry offerings have mainly limited such combined service only to the very largest institutions.