401(k)/IRA
Bloomberg favors a public-option national workplace savings program, modeled on the federal Thrift Savings Plan. Its government match would be paid for with 'a reduction in the tax break...
MassMutual to offer student debt relief program
The program, administered by CommonBond, will be offered to 2.6 million MassMutual retirement plan participants. An estimated 44 million Americans owe $1.5 trillion in student loan debt, according to...
A Look Back at (and Beyond) the ‘Stretch’ IRA
Under the new SECURE Act, most non-spouses must withdraw and pay taxes on inherited IRA assets within ten years instead of "stretching" the process over (possibly) decades. What will...
The SECURE Act Set To Pass (Finally)
'This is an early Christmas present,' said Melissa Kahn, managing director of the Defined Contribution team at State Street Global Advisors (SSgA), in an interview yesterday.
What rollover IRA owners are thinking
59% of US households with traditional IRAs in mid-2019, or 21 million US households, had accounts that included rollover assets from employer-sponsored retirement plans, according to a recent survey by...
Buttigieg’s plan to close the 401(k) coverage gap
The Buttigieg plan would borrow elements of the SIMPLE IRA, the auto-IRAs created in California and Oregon, and existing 401(k)s to ensure that any full-time “middle-earning American worker” can...
Marshmallows and Social Security
Should US retirees delay claiming Social Security until age 70, even if they have to spend savings until then? The Center for Retirement Research at Boston College proposes that...
MassMutual’s vision for Open MEPs (if they become reality)
MassMutual, a manager of multiple-employer retirement plans for affiliated companies since 1989, hopes to manage Open MEPs. Legislation on Open MEPs is stalled in the U.S. Senate.
New safe harbor for electronic retirement plan disclosures
Retirement plan sponsors can now satisfy disclosure requirements by making the information available on a website, Wagner Law Firm experts explain. Photo: Marcia Wagner.
Wide variation seen in British target date funds
Here’s another instance--along with coverage ratios, fiduciary duties of advisors, and the decline of pensions--where the British and American retirement industries share certain challenges.
‘Auto-portability’ gets green light from DOL
Retirement Clearinghouse, creator of a technology by which small abandoned 401(k) accounts would automatically follow their owners to their next plan, has received the permissions it needed to begin...
Your copy of ‘How America Saves,’ small biz edition
The new report, which complements Vanguard's recent 'How America Saves 2019' report on retirement savings in large retirement plans, documents savings patterns among workers in smaller plans.
Wide but shallow: the impact of auto-enrollment in the UK
In British defined contribution plans, employer and employee contributions average a total of only 5.1% of salary per participant. By contrast, defined benefit (DB) plan members receive contributions totaling...
Auto-enrollees don’t ‘borrow to save,’ researchers say
In a departure from their preliminary findings of three years ago, economists found that middle-income government workers didn't increase their debt levels after being auto-enrolled in the Thrift Savings...
Flash: House passes major retirement bill
The Secure Act (H.R. 1994), which provides for "open multiple employer plans" and reduced liability for employers who want to add annuities to their retirement plans, passed by a...
Germany struggles with defined contribution
Among low-income Germans, only 28% of those earning up to €2,500 ($2,804) a month were signed up for a workplace pension and just over half (52%) of those earning...
Principal buys Wells Fargo’s retirement business
The acquisition will double the size of Principal’s U.S. retirement business in terms of total recordkeeping assets. More than two-thirds of Wells Fargo’s institutional retirement assets are in plans...
The Case for Collaboration among State-Sponsored Savings Plans
The authors of this article, Angela M. Antonelli, director of the Georgetown University Center for Retirement Initiatives (pictured), J. Mark Iwry, a Brookings Institution fellow, and David C. John,...
Ireland to auto-enroll workers into retirement plans
Ireland's plan also calls for auto-escalation. By 2028, the total contribution for each member would be 12% of salary a year. The government will add 2%, for a total...
Unsure how much to commit to Roth or traditional accounts? This rule might help.
'Higher-income investors have greater exposures to tax-schedule uncertainty, which can be managed using post-tax Roth options,' says a new paper from the Journal of Financial Economics.