Maine's year-old retirement fund hits $10M milestone
Photo / Tim Greenway
Elizabeth Bordowitz, center, MERIT’s executive director, with Lewiston-based Quoddy Shoes owners Kevin and Kirsten Shorey, who enrolled in MERIT earlier this year.
A month after hitting the $8.2 million mark for funded accounts, Maine Retirement Investment Trust, or MERIT, reached a year-one milestone of $10 million.
In just over a year since its full launch in January 2024, MERIT has enrolled over 12,500 Maine employees in the retirement savings program.
MERIT is a way for Maine employers to provide retirement savings opportunities for their employees. For employees, the workplace retirement savings program follows from job to job.
“For a small employer it is so hard to offer employees any additional benefits or a retirement plan - and they deserve to have a trusted retirement program,” said Joseph Perry, Maine’s state treasurer. “Once an account is set up, it mostly takes care of itself, employees are in and they are saving money.”
The program is intended to close the retirement savings gap for Mainers.
The focus is on expanding access to retirement savings and educating employers and employees about the program's benefits. Next steps will be to reach out to employers who have recently met the five-or-more-employee threshold. They will be notified that registration will be necessary by June 30.
MERIT was established by the Maine Legislature in 2021 to provide a state-facilitated workplace retirement savings program for employees without employer-sponsored plans.
A pilot, launched in late 2023, enrolled 16 employers and 169 employees. The full rollout began in January 2024 to nearly 10,000 employers and 200,000 employees — about 40% of Maine’s private-sector workforce.
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