The first employers have signed onto the Delaware EARNS retirement benefit program.
Eleven small businesses and nonprofits are participating in a pilot of EARNS this month to help make sure the program’s ready for formal launch on July 1.
Delaware EARNS is a retirement savings program for private-sector workers who don’t have access to a workplace retirement plan through their jobs.
Employers with five or more Delaware employees are required for an employer to participate in the EARNS program.
An employer is exempt if it already offers a qualified retirement plan, has less than five employees, or has been in business for less than six months.
"And really it's designed for them to give us feedback before we fully open up, but like I say a little bit of a kind of a dress rehearsal so we can just fine tune things and make sure we're fully ready to go in July. So it's certainly a small start for the program,” said Ted Griffith, the program director for the Delaware EARNS Program. “It's big in terms of being the official start of the program, but it's a small start that lays the groundwork for a much wider reach."
Griffith adds they anticipate reaching thousands of employers and tens of thousands of individuals once the program formally starts this summer.
"It's going to be on the order of a few hundred ultimately in terms of the number of participant employees, a few hundred. So again it's still at a small scale which is appropriate because we're just piloting and testing," said Griffith.
Employers have until October 15 to either register or certify that they are exempt from the EARNS program.
