The structural gap at the heart of defined contribution plans has always been the same: they were engineered to accumulate assets, not to pay them out. J.P. Morgan Asset Management's 2026 Defined Contribution Plan Participant Survey, released July 13, makes that tension legible in participant terms. Ninety-one percent of respondents said they want guaranteed income options available inside the plan itself, and 73% want the decision-making process made simpler.
The decumulation wall
Defined contribution plans dominate private retirement saving, but their architecture stops at the account balance. The participant is handed a lump sum and left to solve the income question independently. That transfer of complexity is precisely what the survey data reflects. Nearly three in four respondents signaled they want that burden reduced, and the even larger share pressing for in-plan income suggests participants know where they want the solution to live: inside the plan, before the rollover.
What "guaranteed income" signals about plan design
The preference for in-plan guaranteed income is a signal about where participants want the risk managed. Out-of-plan annuity purchases require participants to navigate the retail insurance market after separation from service. In-plan options, by contrast, keep the institutional pricing and fiduciary oversight of the employer-sponsored structure intact. The 91% figure in J.P. Morgan Asset Management's survey points to appetite for that kind of institutional wrapper, at scale.
The "easy button" framing
J.P. Morgan Asset Management's own characterization of the findings used the phrase "easy button" to describe what participants are asking for. The plain reading: participants do not want to become retirement income specialists. The 73% seeking simpler decision-making fits a pattern already visible in plan design: default enrollment, auto-escalation, target-date funds. Each has reduced friction by moving the decision upstream, away from the individual. Guaranteed income inside the plan would follow the same logic, applied to the distribution phase rather than the accumulation phase.