Most workers have retirement plans but no retirement strategy

Most American workers have access to a retirement plan. What they don't have is a plan for retirement, and new data from Gallagher suggests the difference between those two things is a financial advisor.

Only 23 percent of US employees have ever worked with a financial advisor to develop a financial plan, according to Gallagher's 2026 Financial Benchmarks report, which drew on survey responses from 3,717 US organizations collected between January and March 2026, supplemented by the 2026 Financial Health Assessment. Among employees who have developed a plan with an advisor, 81 percent rate their financial situation as good or excellent. Among those without one, 50 percent rate it as fair or poor — a 31-point gap that captures, in a single comparison, the case for professional financial guidance.

The report also found that only 28 percent of employees believe their current retirement savings strategy will enable them to achieve their goals, even as 85 percent of their employers offer retirement benefits and 57 percent use auto-enrollment.

The advisor access gap

The infrastructure of retirement saving is broadly in place. Auto-enrollment is near-standard. Most employer match formulas fall between 50 percent and 100 percent of employee contributions, capped at four percent to six percent of pay. Immediate eligibility for defined contribution plans climbed five points from 2025 to reach 42 percent. Yet nearly one in five employers report that 10 percent or more of their employees have taken loans or withdrawals from retirement accounts — a signal that the plan exists but the strategy does not.

"Most employers are providing the benefits — retirement plans, medical coverage, disability and life insurance," said Rory Lough, senior vice president of executive planning at Gallagher. "The gap isn't whether the benefit exists. It's whether employees understand how to use it and how it fits into their broader financial picture."

That framing points directly at the advisory opportunity. Employers are not the source of personalized guidance. The are, as Lough put it, the access point. Connecting employees to financial professionals who can translate plan access into retirement readiness is precisely what the data suggests most workers lack.

SECURE 2.0 and the liquidity problem

Gallagher's findings on the Secure Savings Enhancement Act of 2022 (SECURE 2.0) add a specific dimension. With mandatory provisions largely embedded in plan administration, employers are evaluating optional features. Nearly half have implemented no optional provisions, or are uncertain whether any have been adopted. Emergency savings accounts, which directly address the account-leakage problem the report documents, remain rare: only five percent of employers offer a formal emergency savings program.

The mismatch is notable for advisors working with employer clients on plan design. The provisions most likely to interrupt retirement account leakage have the lowest adoption rates. Meanwhile, 27 percent of employees have no emergency savings at all, and a further 24 percent hold less than three months of expenses — meaning the retirement account is often the only liquid asset many workers have.

Molly Beer, national practice leader for retirement at Gallagher, framed the challenge in terms that resonate with the growing interest in managed accounts and AI-assisted guidance tools. "What we're clearly seeing is growing demand for hyper-personalized support from employees," Beer said. "The challenge is that delivering one-to-one guidance at scale is incredibly difficult, especially across large workforces. That's where managed accounts, advice solutions and, increasingly, technology and AI come into play."