Nevin's Data "Points"

   If I had a dollar for every time I've heard the word "convergence" over the past year . . . well, I'd probably have enough to fund a managed account. Maybe two. Retirement advisors are becoming wealth advisors. Wealth advisors are moving into retirement plans. Recordkeepers are evolving into workplace financial platforms. Everybody, it seems, wants to “own” the participant relationship. Though, come to think of it, this isn't the first time we've heard this tune. In fact, every decade seems to produce a new prediction that the walls separating financial services are finally coming down.  This time, though, the argument feels different. My buddy Fred Barstein has been one of the industry's most vocal advocates, arguing that convergence between retirement and wealth management isn't something on the horizon — it's already reshaping the business. And to be fair, the evidence has become considerably stronger of late. Consider the recordkeeping busin...

  Every so often a report comes along that says less about retirement policy than it does about the temptation to reduce complex issues to a simplistic scoreboard — that fits a particular agenda.  Even if it amounts to jamming a square peg into a round hole. This week’s entry comes from a report arguing that 401(k) plans without private equity and other alternative investments “significantly outperformed” pension plans that invested heavily in those alternatives. The implication, of course, is that pension plans — and perhaps the experts managing them — somehow got it wrong. More precisely, it takes to task the decision(s) by those once-vaunted defined benefit plans for having the temerity to invest in … private markets (gasp!).  Now, there are plenty of reasons to approach the introduction of private markets to defined contribution plans with caution — and that was before the recent Labor Department proposal. [i] But any credible retirement plan professional understand...

I n a calendar already chock full of special days and commemorative months, next week we’ll add another: Women’s Retirement Security Day. If this one has snuck up on you — well, it’s a first. July 14 this year, the second Tuesday in July thereafter. A national day of action dedicated to raising awareness, sharing resources, and improving retirement outcomes for women. And that’s the key — not a day of remembrance, a day for action. For much of this country’s history, women were largely expected to derive retirement security through someone else’s employment — a husband’s pension, survivor benefits, or eventually Social Security spousal benefits. The retirement system itself was largely designed around a traditional, uninterrupted male career model: one worker, one employer, one pension, one primary breadwinner. But many women’s lives — including my mother’s — never really fit that model. ad space Mom, a schoolteacher, had a career of her own, but took a fairly significant (and unpaid) ...

This is the time of year when you hear a lot of talk about the “unalienable” rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And while they weren’t written with retirement plans in mind — to my ears they may describe the aspirations behind retirement better than almost anything else in American public policy.  “Life” is, of course, central to retirement planning. It defines not only the time we have to prepare financially, physically, and emotionally for retirement — but also the length of time those preparations must sustain us. ad space Granted, retirement is a relatively new and for many an as yet unexplored reality. But it’s easy to take for granted that millions of older Americans today live with a degree of financial security that previous generations often lacked. Before pensions, Social Security, and defined contribution plans, growing old frequently meant dependency — on family, charity, or continued labor.  “Liberty” may be even more directly connected to re...