Deferred profit sharing programs-an incentive approach to employee securityhave displayed remarkable growth in recent years. The major thlust in profit sharing developments is in the greater flexibility of plans to meet the individual needs of participants. Noninsured corporate pension and deferred profit sharing funds are the fastest growing segment of the total private and public retirement fund picture. The last fourteen years have witnessed striking portfolio shifts among such funds. While total assets of the funds were seven times larger in 1965 than in 1951, over twenty-six times as many dollars were invested in common stocks, listed at book value. The insurance industry, with a few notable exceptions, tended to ignore these developments, or at best responded defensively, with limited success, by striving to cope with competition without appropliate insurance products suitable to the task. The insurance industry is now actively soliciting profit sharing business and looks forward to highly successful marketing in the future. The employee benefit field is rapidly evolving, ever changing. Techniques for retirement provision have changed from passing out sun dials to retiring Roman citizens to providing life-time income or optional settlements from qualified pension and deferred profit sharing plans. Companies of all sizes have retirement plans. Nearly every large company has one; smaller companies are adopting them at a recordbreaking rate. Growth of Qualified Plans Both pension and deferred profit sharing programs have displayed remarkable growth in recent years. Pensions have numerically increased three-fold since Bert L. Metzger, M.A., is Director, Profit Sharing Research Foundation. He is author of Profit Sharing in Perspective, 2d edition, 1966. This paper was presented at the A.R.I.A. 1968 Annual Meeting. *Taken for the most part from Bert L. Metzger's new study entitled Investment Practices, Performance, and Management of Profit Sharing Trust Funds (Evanston, Ill.: Profit Sharing Research Foundation, March, 1969). 1954, from 18,331 plans to 76,040 by the end of 1966. During the same period, deferred profit sharing programs increased almost six-fold from a smaller base of 8,242 plans to 55,873. By March 31, 1968, the pension and profit sharing totals had risen to 89,650 and 66,822 respectively. Chart 1 reflects only growth in corporate plans, and does not include HR 10 plan approvals. Much of this growth is attributable to the movement of smaller companies into retirement programs. Another factor worth noting is the ascending position of deferred profit sharing in the retirement planning picture. In each of several successive periods, deferred profit sharing programs constituted a slightly larger portion of the total increase in plans during that respective period. For example, during the January 1, 1940-August 31, 1946 period, profit sharing represented only 28.4 percent of the increase in plans, pensions for 71.6 percent. Current practice during the 1960's stands out in sharp