SECURE 2.0 Auto-Enrollment

Context

Human Interest administers 401(k) plans for small and mid-size businesses. The SECURE 2.0 Act introduced new automatic enrollment requirements for retirement plans, changing the rules for how and when eligible employees must be enrolled.

Problem

Roughly 40,000 existing eligible employees on self-enroll plans had never signed up for their 401(k). They'd been notified (or should have been) about their eligibility, but never took action. Some may not have received proper notification due to past communication delivery failures. Others saw the notification and didn't act.

The question wasn't just "how do we comply with SECURE 2.0 going forward." It was "what do we do about the 40K people on self-enroll plans who never signed up, and what's the right product call now that the regulatory landscape has shifted."

Approach

• Used regulatory requirements as the forcing function. SECURE 2.0 created the mandate. But the product decision was whether to apply auto-enrollment retroactively to the existing 40K, not just prospectively to new hires. That was a judgment call, not a compliance checkbox.
• Grounded the decision in data. I analyzed past communication delivery records and identified where notification failures had likely contributed to non-enrollment. That evidence base made the case that these employees deserved a second chance at enrollment, not that they'd actively opted out.
• Navigated the dual-sided impact. This decision affected both employers (who'd see higher participation rates and different plan cost profiles) and individual employees (who'd start having retirement contributions deducted). Getting the communication and opt-out flow right was as important as the enrollment logic itself.

Outcome

Beyond the business metrics: 40,000 people started saving for retirement who previously weren't. That's the part of this project I think about most.

What I'd do differently

Communication sequencing could have been tighter. We enrolled 40K people, but the opt-out and notification flow was designed under time pressure. A more deliberate communication experience, with better sequencing of timing, channel, and tone, would have reduced confusion and cut the support load on employer admins.