It’s not enough to put in automatic features in retirement plansif those features don’t push people into saving at a high enoughrate, or to take an active role in choosing investments for theiraccount.

That’s according to a report in Psychology Today, which says that infact automatic features may be deceiving participants into thinkingthat their retirement is taken care of, in the way a definedbenefit pension once took care of the monthly income needs ofretirees.

However, the opposite is true—and in fact people oftencompletely lose sight of the fact that they are fully responsiblefor the outcome of their retirement savings, while that was not thecase for pension plans.

Auto-features have resulted in more people saving forretirement, but they’re not saving enough.

A Vanguard report says that, of its customers enrolled in anautomatic savings plan, 52 percent were in a program that onlysaved 3 percent, while another 28 percent had savings rates of4–5 percent and only 20 percent had a savings rate of 6 percent orgreater.

While Vanguard did not specify how many participants were saving15 percent or more, the report says that “it was likely a fractionof 20 percent.”

And the average Vanguard customer saved just 6.2 percent oftheir income, with a median saving rate of 5 percent in 2016. Saysthe report, “Interestingly, these numbers were lower than any timesince 2007, and Vanguard attributed the declines to an ‘increase inautomatic enrollment.’”

In another report, Wells Fargo found that fewer than 40 percent of individuals automaticallyenrolled in its savings plan have a savings rate of 10 percent ormore. In yet another report, Alight Solutions found in its 2017survey of large employers that 37 percent of employers provided a defaultsavings rate of 3 percent and another 30 percent have a rate of 6percent.

That is so not enough.

It’s now recommended that people save at least 15 percent oftheir income, while some experts are going farther out on a limb torecommend 18 or even 20 percent.

But that isn’t happening, and indeed the auto-features could beencouraging people to take a similar hands-off attitude towardtheir 401(k)s that they once took with pension plans.

From a psychological standpoint, the article says, this is verydangerous: “Psychologists know only too well how easy it is for usto procrastinate, form overly rosy images about the future,buy impulsively, overspend, make bad spendingdecisions, and so on. What is more, emergencies today, whether theyare medical or personal (divorce, job loss, etc.) can devastate personal finances. The upshot is thatit is very difficult for many people to save adequately for theirretirement.”

And what’s happening is that auto-features in a plan “maycreate the illusion that one’s retirement istaken care of, making people falsely complacent and unprepared,” aswell as encouraging passivity in personal finances—and people arealready reluctant enough to take the time and effort to learn aboutinvestments and understand exactly how investing and retirementplans work.

Automatic features are good for boosting enrollment and savingsrates, but they’re not enough to prepare people for retirement orto get them actively engaged in their own financial futures. Peopletend to view them as a solution, instead of only part of a completeapproach to retirement savings.