401(k) Savings

If you are a regularly-scheduled full-time employee over age 21, you are eligible to participate in the 401(k) Savings and Thrift plan on your date of hire.  Part-time employees can become eligible to participate after working for a certain period of time. 

Newly eligible employees will receive a packet from Empower Retirement, the plan recordkeeper, and an email notification from Gallagher when they are able to enroll. After you receive that notification, you can enroll in the plan at any time on the Empower website.

For more information, please see the 401(k) section under Transition Your Benefits.

Gallagher’s 401(k) plan has an auto-enroll provision that will set you up for savings if you don’t act to defer at least 5% of your pay when you first become eligible to participate in the plan. When auto-enroll is applied after 90 days of service, you are automatically enrolled at 5% of eligible earnings so you can take full advantage of company matching contributions that may be offered in the future. You will have the opportunity to increase or decrease your contributions before the effective date of the automatic enrollment.

When you enroll in the 401(k), you will choose a percentage of your eligible pay to contribute to the plan. These contributions will be set aside through payroll deductions and deposited into your account within the plan. At any time, you may increase or decrease your contribution percentage online or by phone.

You can choose to make pre-tax, Roth 401(k) or a combination of both types of contributions. Your pre-tax contributions go into your plan account before taxes are taken out, so pre-tax contributions offer a way to reduce your income tax bill in the current year.  Roth after-tax contributions, on the other hand, are subject to income taxes but generate tax-free investment returns in the plan over time. 

The plan offers solid investment choices geared to meet the needs of retirement investors, including Vanguard Target Date Funds that can simplify investing. You can choose one diversified target fund geared toward your retirement date or you can create your own investment portfolio. Until you make an investment selection, all your contributions will be invested in one of the Target Date Funds based on your age.

You’re not “locked in” to your decisions. You can always:

• Enroll or change the amount you save*
• Stop or resume contributions to the Savings Plan*
• Transfer your balance among the array of investment options offered in the plan
• Change the way you allocate your contributions among the various funds

*401(k) contributions and any changes are reflected as soon as administratively feasible after the information is received by the Corporate Payroll Department.

The IRS imposes limits on how much you can defer into your 401(k) plan account each year. The IRS sets a limit as to how much an individual may contribute pre-tax each year. Click here to find the current annual contribution amounts.

It’s important to think about what will happen to your 401(k) account upon your passing.  You can select, view or change a beneficiary(ies) by accessing your account at www.empower.com/ajg.

Go to empower.com/ajg for a variety of tools and resources to help you plan for your financial future:

• Retirement calculators
• Investor profile quiz
• Custom portfolios
• Impact of loans and withdrawals
• Investment advisory service (fee required)

Following your one-year anniversary of employment, you will be eligible for company matching contributions as outlined in the plan documents. The 401(k) Savings & Thrift plan has a discretionary company match provision that can offer dollar-for-dollar company matching contributions on up to 5% of eligible pay that an employee elects to defer in a given year. Each year, the Company decides whether or not confirm a matching contribution for the year, and if so, at what level.

Company matching contributions, when made available by Gallagher for a particular plan year, are deposited into the plan after year-end for employees who are actively employed as of December 31 (certain exceptions apply).

You always maintain ownership of your own contributions to the plan, plus any investment returns that they earn. Ownership in company matching contributions is earned over time through a vesting schedule. This schedule determines the percentage of your company match account you own if you leave the company.

As you can see in the chart below, when you have five years of service with the company, you own 100% of current and future company matching contribution and earnings in your account. This applies regardless of when you start contributing to the plan and how long the company matching contributions are in your account. After five years, it’s all yours.