They make it sound so simple.
The Aspen Leadership Forum on Retirement Savings released a summary from their June meeting, which focused on “five big ideas about closing the access gap and making retirement savings work for everyone.”
While it would seem like a complicated issue, participants, who include notable names like BlackRock’s Anne Ackerley, Bipartisan Policy Center’s Jason Fichtner, and the Brookings Institute’s Mark Iwry, said each is “doable” and expressed optimism about the future.
Tilted Moving From 57 Million to Zero, a reference to the 57 million workers in America who lack access to workplace retirement savings, this year’s forum was smaller in size and scope in order to concentrate on “access expansion and equitable retirement savings outcomes by race and gender.”
The five ideas that stood out were:
No. 1: Different workers have different financial needs.
Citing its own research, it noted, “women and workers of color consistently have substantially lower median retirement account balances than their white, male counterparts—even when controlling for income. By taking an evidence-based approach to understanding and solving for the specific drivers of these disparate outcomes, we can help all workers benefit from one of America’s best tools for building both retirement security and wealth.”
No. 2: ‘Personalization’ may be the route to equity in retirement savings.
“As the industry’s ability to personalize the retirement saving and spending experience continues to improve, plan sponsors and providers are looking for more personalized ways to solve for their participants’ unique barriers to saving, like a lack of emergency savings or burdensome student loan debt payments,” participants noted.
No. 3: Federal and state governments are critical partners in growing the private retirement market.
According to several forum participants, “the state automatic enrollment requirements that accompany state-facilitated auto-IRA plans appear to be prompting many small business owners to offer new private retirement plans to their employees, expanding coverage and creating new business opportunities for the private financial services sector.”
No. 4: Act now to capitalize on the Saver’s Match.
Noting the excitement surrounding the Saver’s Match in SECURE 2.0, they called it “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get meaningful amounts of money into the retirement accounts of low-income workers.
However, they also said there is concern that “absent thoughtful and strategic preparation, the program may not reach its full potential.”
No. 5: The retirement ecosystem needs more—and more diverse—champions.
“Given the interconnected nature of these issues and the burgeoning sense that national policy will be required to eradicate the retirement savings access gap,” the summary concluded, “there is an urgent need to bring new voices, expertise, and perspectives to the inclusive retirement savings community in order to both learn from one another and share networks, resources, and ideas and also to build a broader, more diverse coalition that better represents the larger ecosystem of household wellbeing, of which retirement is a critical piece.
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL SUMMARY
