Workers have largely continued to contribute to their 401(k) plans despite the fact that some companies have stopped matching contributions, and investors are still allocating good chunks of their savings to equities, executives from some of the country's largest mutual-fund companies said.

Leaders in retirement savings at Fidelity Investments, T. Rowe Price Group Inc. (TROW), Vanguard Group and Principal Financial Group Inc. (PFG) discussed retirement trends at the Investment Company Institute's annual meeting in Washington Friday.

"We have not seen any increase in the opt-out percentages due to matches being stopped," said Scott David, president of workplace investing at Fidelity Investments. In addition, hardship withdrawals and loans from 401(k) plans are down from 2008, David said.

Daniel Houston, president of retirement and investor services at Principal Financial Group, and Cynthia Egan, president of T. Rowe Price Retirement Plan Services Inc., said their companies were witnessing similar behavior.

Employee and employer behavior across Fidelity's 401(k) business has been largely steady in the first quarter, and a good portion of retirement contributions were being allocated to equity markets, David said. "Participant behavior is not really tracking with the headlines, and what we are seeing in the press," he said.

During times of extreme volatility in the market, queries from investors have increased, but that hasn't resulted in assets being withdrawn from 401(k) plans, David said. On one recent volatile day, for example, Fidelity handled 1.2 million telephone and Internet queries, about double the normal volume, but there wasn't a commensurate increase in transactions, he said. By and large, investors were checking their accounts and seeking reassurance.

On Oct. 10, when the Dow Jones Industrial Average experienced a steep decline, 2.4 million investors contacted Fidelity, David said. There's "a tremendous need for reassurance and guidance" that their financial products will serve them well, he said.

Houston said many 401(k) investors are "more diversified than you might think," with assets in accounts other than their 401(k) plans.

But Egan said the majority of 401(k) participants are savers, not investors, "and we need to work with them as savers." Two-thirds to three-fourths of participants aren't actively engaged in thinking about their investments and taking action with their investments, she said. That makes target-date funds and some income options important, Egan said. (A target-date fund is a portfolio of cash, bonds and stocks that automatically resets the asset mix in its portfolio according to a selected time frame that is appropriate for a particular investor.)

Many investors with $300,000 or $400,000 in their plans think they have accumulated a sufficient nest egg and don't understand how much that will be able to provide in retirement income, she said.

And Egan noted that, while auto-enrollment has helped get employees into 401(k) plans, what employees do with their assets isn't necessarily appropriate. "Target-date funds have been a good solution for this."

As for the questions now being raised about the appropriate amount of equity exposure in target-date funds, Barbara Fallon-Walsh, a principal at Vanguard, said, "Great minds don't always agree in terms of what glide paths should be. I am sure there will be a lot of work done to dampen the volatility in target-date funds."

Ultimately, said Houston, there is no "super bullet," no one product that will work for all investors. Solutions - be they annuities or withdrawal strategies - must be tailored to fit the needs of investors, he said.

-By Daisy Maxey, Dow Jones Newswires; 201-938-4048; daisy.maxey@dowjones.com