Nevin's Data "Points"

  There was some good news — and some disappointing news — about the take-up of a “new” plan design last week. It was the first anniversary of a coalition of recordkeepers called the  Portable Services Network  (PSN) — a consortium of firms that includes Alight, Vanguard, Fidelity Investments, Empower, TIAA and Principal — not to mention the Retirement Clearinghouse, whose  long-term patience  and commitment made the concept of auto-portability a reality. There’s even  support for auto-portability  in SECURE 2.0.      The Good News The good news: PSN reported that in its first year of operation — more than 15,000 plans representing approximately 5 million participants have signed up for auto portability. According to a press release, 549 auto portability transactions have been completed as of Dec. 1, 2024; and 7,841 auto portability transactions are “in motion” as of Dec. 1, 2024. In-motion transactions are those where the Retiremen...

 It’s ironic that programs designed to provide retirement income pay so little attention to the realization of that objective. Still, some have said that this could be the year for retirement income—a combination of new offerings, volatile markets, and rising interest rates—and yet, it still seems that there are obstacles to overcome.  Here are six: 1. There is no legal requirement to provide a lifetime income option. Let’s face it, it’s a full-time job just keeping up with the plan provisions, standards, participant notices and nondiscrimination tests that are required by law. The notion that a plan sponsor would, in the absence of a compelling motivation take on extra work, and work that carries with it additional financial and fiduciary responsibility as well, doesn’t seem very realistic. Indeed, with no legal obligation to provide this offering, and an underlying concern that providing the option does involve taking on additional liability… 2. The safe ...

So, how many 401(k) accounts do  you  have? At the moment, I have four—one from each of the employers in my career (including this one), all except the first one (that one went for law school and a house downpayment). Apparently I’m not alone. A recent  survey  of Plan Sponsor Council of America members found that only 18% of respondents had a single 401(k) account. Nearly as many (14.3%) had five. As it turns out, three was the most common response. I joke that it’s just “market research”—after all, what better way to assess the quality of various retirement plan offerings than to have your own 401(k) supported by some of the best? Sure, there’s been institutional pricing at one that I’d hate to lose, access to a specific managed account platform that I value, and a really cool online platform at another—and then, in the back of my mind, is a concern that the taxability detail might get “jostled” in the process—in short, plenty of reasons to rational...

It’s ironic that programs designed to provide retirement income pay so little attention to the realization of that objective. That’s right—for the vast majority of participants today, creating that “paycheck for the rest of your life” remains a DIY undertaking. To this day only about half of defined contribution plans currently provide an option for participants to establish a systematic series of periodic payments, much less an annuity or other in-plan retirement income option.  However, the need for that solution is widely acknowledged—and there are some new, if somewhat familiar, solutions emerging.  Earlier this month, BlackRock garnered some  headlines  with news that not only was it building annuity contracts into a target-date fund series, but also that it had already lined up five large plan sponsors (with some $7.5 billion in assets) to implement the option as a default. That followed by a few months the March  announcement  of a c...