Defined contribution plan
A defined contribution (DC) plan is a type of retirement plan in which the employer, employee or both make contributions on a regular basis. Individual accounts are set up for participants and benefits are based on the amounts credited to these accounts (through employee contributions and, if applicable, employer contributions) plus any investment earnings on the money in the account. In defined contribution plans, future benefits fluctuate on the basis of investment earnings. The most common type of defined contribution plan is a savings and thrift plan. Under this type of plan, the employee contributes a predetermined portion of his or her earnings (usually pretax) to an individual account, all or part of which is matched by the employer.
In the United States, specifies a defined contribution plan as a "plan which provides for an individual account for each participant and for benefits based solely on the amount contributed to the participant's account, and any income, expenses, gains and losses, and any forfeitures of accounts of other participants which may be allocated to such participant's account."
While Defined Contribution plans are sometimes referred to as pensions, they are not. The word "pension" is defined as "a fixed amount, other than wages, paid at regular intervals to a person or to the person's surviving dependents in consideration of past services". In contrast, a Defined Contribution retirement plan is an arrangement where an employer, during the time a person is employed, puts money in a registered retirement account on the employee's behalf. In general, a defined contribution plan provides much less security for the employee, and much less obligation for the employer, than a defined benefit pension plan. Consequently, over time, many employers, especially in the private sector, have discontinued offering defined benefit plans to their employees and have switched to offering them defined contribution plans instead.
In a defined contribution plan, fixed contributions are paid into an individual account by employers and employees. The contributions are then invested, for example in the stock market, and the returns on the investment (which may be positive or negative) are credited to the individual's account. On retirement, the member's account is used to provide retirement benefits, sometimes through the purchase of an annuity which then provides a regular income. Defined contribution plans have become widespread all over the world in recent years and are now the dominant form of plan in the private sector in many countries.
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