You Own Wall Street › Employer plans › Kemper

Kemper 401(k) retirement plan: the investment options

Does your 401(k) vote the way you would? $948m of the $985m in the Kemper plan votes in secret. Fidelity 500 Index Fund, the most common fund in the plans we track, publishes every vote: answer 3 of its ballots, then see your result.

The question on the ballot

As filed

Kemper 401(k) match and balances, from the filing

Company money in
about $4,140 per active participant
$29m in plan year 2024
Employees saved
about $5,950 each
$42m in plan year 2024
Average balance
$77,800
11,413 people with a balance
In the plan
$888m
at the end of plan year 2024

Company money is the match plus any other employer contributions, averaged over all 7,115 active participants, including anyone who did not contribute. The filing reports dollars, not the match formula; the plan’s summary plan description states the formula.

SourceThe plan’s annual report to the Department of Labor — Form 5500, Schedule H, plan year 2024 · filed by KEMPER CORPORATION as “KEMPER CORPORATION 401(K) RETIREMENT PLAN” · EIN 954255452, plan number 003 · search the filings

The Kemper 401(k) holds $985m. Of the $964m we could identify from the plan’s own filing, 98.3% sits in funds that publish no record of how they voted your shares — collective trusts, which unlike a mutual fund file no Form N-PX and leave no public trace of a single vote.

SourceKemper’s own annual retirement-plan filing with the SEC (Form 11-K, Schedule of Assets) · open the filing

What the plan holdsVehicleVoting recordValue
Vanguard Target Retirement 2035 Trust I Fundlisted as “Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $138m
Vanguard Target Retirement 2030 Trust I Fundlisted as “Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $119m
Vanguard Target Retirement 2040 Trust I Fundlisted as “Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $117m
Vanguard Target Retirement 2045 Trust I Fundlisted as “Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $102m
Vanguard Target Retirement 2050 Trust I Fundlisted as “Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $73m
Spartan 500 IDX PL CL C CITlisted as “Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $71m
Vanguard Target Retirement 2025 Trust I Fundlisted as “Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $68m
JPMorgan Large Cap Growth Fundlisted as “Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $53m
Goldman Sachs Stable Value Collective Trust Class 1listed as “Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $36m
Vanguard Target Retirement 2055 Trust I Fundlisted as “Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $35m
Vanguard Target Retirement 2020 Trust I Fundlisted as “Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $34m
Vanguard Target Retirement Income Trust Ilisted as “Collective Trust” Collective trust or separate account NONE $22m

The 12 largest holdings in the plan. “Vehicle” is the description the filing itself gives each investment.

Why there is nothing to show

A mutual fund has to file Form N-PX every year listing every vote it cast on your behalf. A collective investment trust does not. It is a bank-run vehicle sold only inside retirement plans, it is cheaper, and it is now where most 401(k) default money sits — including most target-date funds, which is where savers who never chose anything are put.

So the shares bought with Kemper employees’ retirement savings are voted every proxy season — on executive pay, on board seats, on climate and workforce proposals — and there is no public document anywhere recording how. This is not an oversight by Kemper; it is what the disclosure rules currently require, which is to say: nothing.

What you can do

Check whether your plan offers any registered fund as an alternative — those publish their records, and you can read them here. If it does not, the menu itself is the thing that has to change, and that is a decision made by the plan’s fiduciary committee, not by you alone.

See how funds that do publish voted →

CoverageWe classified 100% of this plan’s assets from the filing. The figure above is the share of the money we could classify; anything we could not identify is excluded from it rather than assumed either way.

Other employer plans

The largest employer plans on the site, and a few more. Each page shows what the plan’s funds did with the shares its savers paid for.

Microsoft 401(k)$64.92bn in the planBank of America 401(k)248,103 savers · $62.90bnJPMorgan Chase 401(k)297,359 savers · $52.91bnGoogle 401(k)154,637 savers · $48.74bnWells Fargo 401(k)$43.80bn in the planAmazon 401(k)943,213 savers · $34.59bnInternational Business Machines 401(k)$28.25bn in the planIntel 401(k)$26.91bn in the planMcdonalds 401(k)$7.47bn in the planDavidson Hospitality Group 401(k)6,384 savers · $107mFirst Brands Group 401(k)7,356 savers · $303mAlaska Airlines 401(k)8,676 savers · $929mNokia of America 401(k)24,381 savers · $9.83bnFlex Technology Group 401(k)1,542 savers · $114m