Minnesota Secure Choice Retirement Program Employers Overview

Employers with five or more employees who do not offer employees a retirement plan are required to enroll in the Minnesota Secure Choice Retirement Program. Employers may exempt out of the program only if they already offer a suitable retirement savings plan to employees.

Employers contributions are not permitted; the only contributions to the program will be wages withheld from employees’ pay checks.

Employers will be required to deduct contributions from their employees’ paychecks and remit those to the program through the service provider Vestwell's employer portal. Employers will be responsible for any cost associated with deducting the contributions and remitting them to the program through Vestwell. Vestwell offers several ways to interface with various payroll software and payroll firms. There will be no employer fees.

The employee’s payroll deduction contribution will be deposited into a Roth IRA account. The program will also offer a Traditional IRA so the employee can elect to contribute on a pre-tax basis.

An initial contribution of 5% is proposed with annual automatic escalation of 1% until it reaches 8%.