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United Bankshares 401(k) retirement plan: the investment options

Does your 401(k) vote the way you would? $111m of the $249m in the United Bankshares 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

United Bankshares 401(k) match and balances, from the filing

Company money in
about $2,820 per active participant
$7m in plan year 2024
Employees saved
about $4,750 each
$13m in plan year 2024
Average balance
$93,100
2,672 people with a balance
In the plan
$249m
at the end of plan year 2024

Company money is the match plus any other employer contributions, averaged over all 2,640 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 UNITED BANKSHARES, INC. as “UNITED BANKSHARES, INC. SAVINGS AND STOCK INVESTMENT PLAN” · EIN 550641179, plan number 003 · search the filings

The United Bankshares 401(k) holds $249m. Of the $111m we could identify from the plan’s own filing, every dollar sits in a fund that publishes no record of how it voted your shares — collective trusts, which unlike a mutual fund file no Form N-PX and leave no public trace of a single vote.

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

What the plan holdsVehicleVoting recordValue
United Bankshares, Inc. Common Stocklisted as “shares” Employer stock Voted by the plan trustee $64m
NT Col S&P 500 Index Fund DC NL T4listed as “units” Collective trust or separate account NONE $45m
NT Col Ext Eq Market Index Fund DC NL T4listed as “units” Collective trust or separate account NONE $22m
Galliard Stable Return Fund Elisted as “units” Collective trust or separate account NONE $19m
Vanguard Target Retirement 2030 Invlisted as “shares” Not identified from the filing Not counted either way $13m
Vanguard Target Retirement 2035 Invlisted as “shares” Not identified from the filing Not counted either way $10m
Vanguard Target Retirement 2025 Invlisted as “shares” Not identified from the filing Not counted either way $9m
Vanguard Target Retirement 2040 Invlisted as “shares” Not identified from the filing Not counted either way $9m
JP Morgan Large Cap Growth R6listed as “shares” Not identified from the filing Not counted either way $8m
MFS Large Cap Value CIT CL CTlisted as “units” Collective trust or separate account NONE $8m
Vanguard Target Retirement 2050 Invlisted as “shares” Not identified from the filing Not counted either way $8m
Vanguard Target Retirement 2045 Invlisted as “shares” Not identified from the filing Not counted either way $6m

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 United Bankshares 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 United Bankshares; 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 70.4% 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.

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