Ted Benna spent decades watching the retirement savings vehicle he helped create enrich high earners while leaving hourly workers with little to show for it. At 84, he is trying to repair that gap with a new program called Radish — an employer-funded savings incentive that requires workers to contribute nothing from their own paychecks.
Benna co-owned a small benefits consulting firm in the late 1970s when he developed the concept that became the modern 401(k). At that point, 38 percent of U.S. private-sector workers — most of them in unionized jobs — held traditional pensions that paid guaranteed income for life. The 401(k) displaced that model almost entirely, shifting retirement risk from employers onto employees.
"The 401(k) isn't working really well now for many middle- and lower-income employees," Benna said, adding that "many of them can't afford to have money taken out of their paycheck even if they have the opportunity to do so."
The scale of what Benna built is not in dispute. Roughly 70 million American workers now hold 401(k)-type accounts, with a combined $10 trillion in assets. Market gains swelled the ranks of 401(k) millionaires, and employers shed costly defined-benefit pension obligations in favor of self-directed plans that carry tax advantages for both company and worker. The plan universe generated approximately $39 billion in revenue in 2023 alone, according to McKinsey & Co.
The problem Benna identifies is participation. More than two-thirds of private-sector workers have access to a 401(k)-type plan, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — but only half of those who are eligible actually enroll. That 50 percent participation rate leaves tens of millions of lower-wage workers with no retirement savings at all, precisely the workers Benna says the original plan was never designed to serve.
Radish addresses that gap with a different funding structure. Instead of drawing from an employee's wages, the plan lets employers deposit money into a worker's account when that worker hits defined performance benchmarks — metrics such as safety records, tenure milestones or on-time delivery rates. The account balance builds over time, which Benna frames as both a savings vehicle for the worker and a retention tool for the employer.
The target workforce is specific. Benna names truckers, warehouse workers, retail staff and hourly employees as the primary population Radish is designed to reach — workers whose budgets are stretched too thin to absorb any reduction in take-home pay, even a modest one directed toward a tax-advantaged account.
Benna is pursuing this from his farm in rural Pennsylvania. He described himself as staring down age 85 as he works to get the program off the ground. That timeline matters: Radish is still in the launch phase, and Benna's own assessment is that success depends on employers choosing to think differently about workplace savings — a behavioral shift that some retirement-policy experts caution is far from guaranteed.
The retirement savings industry Benna helped create is now enormous and deeply entrenched. The $39 billion annual revenue figure from McKinsey reflects a financial ecosystem — record-keepers, asset managers, advisers, plan administrators — built around the existing 401(k) architecture. A parallel, employer-funded model aimed at non-participants does not threaten that ecosystem directly, but it also sits outside the existing revenue channels those players depend on, which gives the industry limited financial incentive to promote it.
The broader enrollment data supports Benna's diagnosis. When half of eligible workers skip a plan their employer already offers, the barrier is not access — it is affordability. A worker earning $15 an hour and covering rent, food and transportation has little room to divert even two or three percent of gross pay into a retirement account, regardless of the tax benefit on the other side.
Benna's regret is pointed. He helped dismantle the pension system that once covered 38 percent of private-sector workers, replaced it with a self-directed model that now sits at a 50 percent participation rate among those who even have access, and acknowledges the result fell short for the workers who needed retirement security most. Radish is his attempt to address that outcome before he runs out of time to do so.
