A federal judge has approved a $5.4 million settlement between Transamerica and its current and former employees who accused the company of offering several poor performing investments in its employee retirement plan.

       The money will be divided up between roughly 24,000 people based on how long they invested in the funds and how much money they had invested.

       According to the lawsuit, employees who invested in Transamerica's retirement plan lost between $15 million and $20 million because certain funds performed worse than comparable ones that employees couldn't choose in the plan.

       Attorney Charles Field, who represented the employees, said “the settlement provides genuine and meaningful relief” to the group.

       The company that provides investment products and life insurance didn't immediately respond Tuesday to questions about the settlement. Transamerica is based in Baltimore, but it has major operations in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where the lawsuit was filed and in Denver.

       The lawsuit argued that Transamerica should have spotted the problem funds sooner and changed the options in its retirement plan because six of the funds employees could choose from underperformed comparable funds by a significant margin over a 10-year period.