Colorado SecureSavings makes it easier for over 200 employers in Garfield County to offer employees retirement savings programs.

“There wasn’t something that was financially feasible for both the employee and the business itself,” Travis Owen, executive chef and owner of Riviera Supper Club and Scratch Kitchen said, explaining that his business had not offered employees a retirement savings plan prior to its enrollment in the program in 2023. “Restaurants operate on such slim margins that it’s very hard to do something like that and stay in business.” 

Nearly 940,000 Colorado workers lacked access to a qualified retirement savings plan at work before the Colorado SecureSavings Program launched two years ago, according to the Colorado Department of the Treasury. 

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“If you contribute to our society, you work all the way through your career, you ought to be able to retire with dignity, and you ought to have a sustainable retirement,” Colorado State Treasurer Dave Young said. “What we discovered is that…there used to be 1 million people here in the state of Colorado that didn’t actually have a way to save for retirement at work. That’s 40% of our private sector workforce.”

Created by the Colorado SecureSavings Board, the program uses automatic enrollment and savings through adjustable payroll deductions to help employees contribute to a Roth Individual Retirement Account. If employees change jobs, the account can transfer to other employers also enrolled in the program.

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The Colorado State Treasury also founded the Partnership for a Dignified Retirement — an association of state-run retirement plans — to decrease costs, while increasing returns, for savers. Current members of the partnership include Maine, Delaware and Vermont.

So far, Colorado SecureSavings enrollees have saved $81 million across 62,000 accounts, with an average balance of $1,300. To date, 260 employers in Garfield County are enrolled in the program, according to the Colorado Department of the Treasury. 

“We actually calculated the cost of not doing something about (the lack of retirement savings plans),” Young said. “It’s an $18 billion tax bill to people like all of us to help supplement the income for people… If we can get people saving early in life or at any point in life, that cost goes down, and our aim is to completely avoid that.”

Colorado businesses are required to enroll in Colorado SecureSavings if they are registered to conduct business in the state, have five or more employees, have been in business for two or more years and don’t already offer employees a qualified retirement savings plan.

Businesses enrolled in the Colorado SecureSavings Program are not charged any fees to participate. Employees pay an annual 0.32% asset-based fee and a $22 account fee. Eligible employees can opt out if they don’t want to participate in the program.

“It was something that was nice and easy for the employees,” Owen said. “A lot of my guys are in their 20s, and so I’m trying to encourage them to have the foresight, that I unfortunately did not as a child, to go ahead and start investing now and to see how that builds up over time.”

Before SecureSavings, retirement savings plans were especially difficult for small businesses to offer.

“It’s really challenging for business owners…particularly small business owners, but any business owner, to manage all the things they have to do,” Young said. “Then also be a fiduciary, responsible for not only setting up all the legal and financial work, but being a fiduciary for a client.”

“The (SecureSavings) account is the employee’s, the business helps us do this through their payroll deduction, but they’re not a fiduciary there,” Young added. “They have no financial responsibility here.”

Young visited the Riviera Supper Club and Scratch Kitchen, as well as other enrolled businesses along the Western Slope, earlier this month.

“It’s fun to watch how much impact it’s having on individuals. We were at these restaurants and other businesses as we went across the Western Slope, and people are excited that they now have some control over their financial lives,” Young said. “They’re excited about having this prospect — they never thought they could save before. And now here they are, they’re saving, and they’re pretty excited.”