IU Health 401(k) and 457(b) - 13 questions and answers for Indiana University Health Physicians
- Daniel Harris
- 2 hours ago
- 8 min read
1) What is the phone number for the Indiana University Health 401(k) Retirement Plan for physicians?
317-963-7693
2) What is the match on the IU Health Retirement Plan?
To our knowledge the current match is a 100% match of your first 4% of your contributions. So if an IU Health physicians contributes 4% of their salary into the IU Health 401(k), IU Health will typically put in 4% so you have 8% in total. There may be some limitations for higher compensated physicians, but this is the general to our knowledge, as of the time of the time we wrote this article on 8/18/26.
3) Is a 4% match actually competitive for a physician employee?
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For an academic medical setting, a 4% match is fairly competitive in our view. Academic medicine often comes with less competitive retirement plans than non-academic medical centers, in part because the professional and lifestyle benefits of an academic environment can be seen as valuable perks in their own right.
4) What does ‘up to 4% match mean in IU Health physicians practice?” (i.e. what does the physician need to actually contribute to get the full match)
To receive the full 4% match, the physician needs to contribute 4% of their salary, to our knowledge. To our knowledge, there is no employer match if the physician makes no contribution.
5) How reliable is the extra employer contribution? Has IU Health paid it consistently, how is it calculated, and should you count on it in your retirement projections?
IU Health may contribute an additional 2.5% of eligible compensation to your 401(k). However, to our knowledge, as of the time of this writing on 8/18/26, IU Health has not made this contribution for employees since 2020. If we were physicians at IU Health, we would be cautious about counting on this contribution in our retirement projections going forward.
6) Does immediate vesting in the IU Health 401(k) make up for the modest match?
In our judgment, it’s somewhat of a wash. Many physicians stay at academic medical centers, like IU Health for five years or more, so they would likely become fully vested anyway with that tenure at a private employer (the max 401(k) vesting schedules are 6 years to our recollection). Academic medical centers also tend to have less generous retirement plans than some other employers, though their other benefits can make up for that difference. Among very large employers, retirement plans tend to be fairly similar, and in our experience, IU Health’s plan falls about in the middle in terms of generosity.
7) Are the investment options and fees good enough in the IU Health 401(k) and 457(b)?
The investment options in the IU Health 401(k) and IU 457(b) are excellent, to our knowledge. The IU Health 401(k) includes a self-directed brokerage account through Charles Schwab, offering access to a wide range of low-cost investments. It also includes low-cost Vanguard mutual funds, which provide an inexpensive way to access broad market indexes.
The 457(b) is aligned with Fidelity, to our knowledge, which has some of the strongest mutual fund offerings available in our view.
Overall, we think the plans are very well designed and provide a strong model for a 401(k)/457(b) structure at an academic medical center. Employees can also make pre-tax, Roth, or catch-up contributions to the IU Health 401(k) and 457(b), giving physicians considerable flexibility in how they save and invest.
Note this information is based of our knowledge at the time of writing this article on 8/18/26. It reflects our opinions but different people can have different views. Our view is that the investment options in the IU Health 401(k) plan and the structure to the IU Health retirement plans are outstanding in our view.
8) What is the quality of the fiduciary guidance in the IU 401(k) or 457(b) plan?
The firms providing advice to IU Health have strong reputations overall, in our opinion.
The IU Health 401(k) also appears to use an open model, which may allow you to select your own financial advisor and pay them from plan assets, particularly through the self-directed brokerage account.
We think this is an ideal model. Rather than being limited to an advisor selected by the plan, an open model may allow you to work with your preferred advisor, provided they are approved by the plan sponsor. In our view, that flexibility is generally in the best interest of physicians.
9) As an IU health physician, can I save enough beyond the 401(k) to achieve my financial goals?
To our knowledge, the IU 457(b) may be available to many IU Health physicians, although eligibility may depend on your exact employer. If Indiana University is technically your employer, you may be eligible for the IU 457(b).
Importantly, we suspect that the IU 457(b) is a governmental 457(b), meaning it has strong creditor protections and, after leaving employment, can generally be rolled into an IRA or another employer’s 401(k) or 403(b). This can make it particularly valuable for physicians concerned about malpractice exposure. The current IU plan document confirms that it is a governmental 457(b).
This is different from a 457(b) offered by a nonprofit employer. Nonprofit 457(b) plans generally have fewer favorable features: they cannot generally be rolled into an IRA, may have more restrictive distribution options, and the assets remain subject to the employer’s creditors. The Steward Healthcare bankruptcy provides a notable example of the risks associated with these plans.
It is important that you confirm with the recruiting and HR/benefits at IU Health that the plan is a “governmental” 457(b) versus a non-governmental 457(b) when considering whether to work at IU Health or fund the 457(b) and how much to fund it – if available.
As with a 401(k), distributions from a 457(b) generally have restrictions while you are still employed. After leaving, a governmental 457(b) generally offers more flexibility than a nonprofit 457(b). We recommend asking IU’s benefits team for the specific distribution terms that apply to you and requesting the current plan document.
We believe that this information is accurate as of 8/18/26 to our knowledge. If the plan is changed this article may not reflect any updates.
Governmental 457(b) | Non-governmental 457(b) | |
Creditor protection | Extremely Strong | Very Weak |
IRA rollover | Allowed | Usually Not Allowed |
Employer creditors | Generally protected | Assets can remain subject to employer creditors |
Distribution rules | Generally more flexible after separation - similar to IRA/401(k)/403(b) rules (required minimum distributions at retirement age) | Usually more restrictive and typically distributions happen ove a shorter period of time in our experience |
10) Are compensation and retirement benefits competitive when being viewed together?”
In our experience, physicians at academic medical centers will often receive somewhat less financial compensation than they might at larger employers, but that can come with other benefits: prestige, potential tuition assistance for those dually appointed with a medical school, and sometimes better vacation and work-life balance.
As a general rule, we’ve found compensation tends to be least attractive at private equity-owned employers, followed by large hospital groups that are not primarily physician-owned, then academic medical centers, with smaller physician-owned medical groups often offering the most attractive compensation.
That’s what we’ve generally seen in our experience working with physicians across the U.S. for the last 16 years who have received a wide range of offers and compensation arrangements.
Of course every group can have some variations from the general norm – but this is what we’ve generally seen since 2010.
11) Will the workload undermine my ability to stay long enough to benefit from the retirement benefits?”
We think the answer is no for most IU physicians. The immediate vesting in the IU Health 401(k) means you don’t have to stay long to receive the employer contributions.
Moreover, you should be able to save consistently while working at IU Health.
If you’re unsure how much to save for your goals, what to invest in, or whether you’re on track, we recommend reaching out to a fiduciary financial advisor to help assess whether your current approach makes sense.
If you’d like to talk with us, you can request an introductory phone call here
12) Will I have enough autonomy and time to manage financial planning and maintain a viable long term investment strategy?”
Financial planning and advice come in many forms, at many price points, and can often be highly customizable.
To use our clients as an example, for some of our clients, we can handle nearly all financial planning and investment changes in just a few hours a year. If push comes to shove, we believe we could distill most financial conversations and execution to about one hour of physician time in a typical year while still keeping them on track.
Or, we can spend much more time working with our physician clients. It really depends on our client’s life and how involved you want to be. If you want to take the burden of managing your finances and wondering whether you’re on track off your shoulders, we encourage you to talk with a good fiduciary financial advisor.
Our point in explaining this and using our firm as an example when you work with a fiduciary financial advisor they’ll adapt their approach or style somewhat to your needs and wants and if you want to not spend a ton of time on finances each year and that is a major goal of yours, it is easy for a fiduciary financial advisors to make recommendations that can be done within the timeframe you want if you can spend about an hour a year on your finances – that can be enough in our view.
To our knowledge, there is about one pure fiduciary financial advisor for every 1,800 adults in the U.S. Pure fiduciary financial advisors are actually rarer than physicians, with roughly one physician for every 270 adults. So, pure fiduciary advisors are quite rare, and if you find one you like, we believe they are worth talking to.
By “pure fiduciary financial advisor,” we mean someone who exclusively provides fiduciary advice and isn’t also selling financial products or operating as a dually registered broker-dealer/investment advisor. Dually registered firms may provide advice while also selling products, and it can be perfectly legal for those firms or their affiliated representatives to receive revenue sharing or other compensation from products they recommend. In our view, that can make true objectivity more difficult when the same organization is effectively operating in both businesses. We believe physicians deserve to know whether their advisor’s loyalty is solely to them or whether there are other financial incentives in the background.
Our goal in sharing these statistics is simply to illustrate how rare pure fiduciaries are—professionals who legally agree to put their clients’ interests first and take on a higher legal standard of responsibility and loyalty to their clients.
13) What happens to my retirement benefits during leave, reduced FTE, or a transition between IU-affiliated entities for an IU physician?
To our knowledge, the IU Health 401(k) does not have particularly restrictive contribution or matching requirements, and we are not aware of a minimum-hours requirement to receive the IU Health 4% match. Of course, you should always confirm the details with IU HR or your benefits team, but in general, IU Health does not appear to impose the kinds of rigorous hours requirements or restrictions we see at some other employers, including private equity-owned medical groups.
Overall, the IU Health 401(k) appears to be a fair and competitive plan, and in our experience, it is broadly in line with what other large academic medical centers provide.
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Disclaimer: This article is written for educational and informational purposes only. You are not a client of D.R. Harris & Co. nor Daniel Harris unless you have a signed written advisors agreement with us. We highly encourage you to do all of your own independent research and talk to HR/Benefits at IU and talk to your own professional advisors before acting on any information you learned about in this article. While we believe the information in this article is correct as of the time we wrote it on 8/18/26, we make no warranties as to its accuracy and you should confirm all employee benefit with the your HR department or benefits people at Indiana University Health.
