October 10, 2024
Today, there are 17 Auto IRA state-facilitated retirement savings programs requiring employers who do not offer their workers an employer-sponsored plan to take action to offer access either by using the state program or adopting a qualified plan. Congress passed SECURE Act reforms in 2019 and 2022, which added several new tools, including pooled-employer plans (PEPs), the Starter-K plan, and tax incentives, all intended to make it easier for small employers to adopt new retirement plans of their own.
But do we know anything yet about the ways these state programs and SECURE Act reforms are affecting new retirement plan formation? The answer is yes. The latest research — a recent NBER/Georgetown Center for Retirement Initiatives (CRI) working paper — finds that state policies requiring employers to facilitate workplace savings options have induced at least 30,000 firms to establish retirement plans in four of the early adopting states. This indicates that states that have implemented Auto IRA legislation have seen an expansion in the retirement plan market for smaller employers and reduction in the retirement plan coverage gap among workers. The study also documents that firms induced to establish retirement plans differ from those that offered benefits before the policies.
Watch this one-hour webinar to learn more about this new study from two of the paper’s authors, as well as private providers, and how the employer market is responding to new public and private options for helping workers save for retirement.
Moderator:
- Angela Antonelli, Research Professor and Executive Director, Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy
Panelists:
- Adam Bloomfield, Ph.D., Non-Resident Scholar, Georgetown University Center for Retirement Initiatives
- Chad Parks, Founder and CEO, Ubiquity
- Manita Rao, Ph.D., Senior Strategic Policy Advisor, AARP Public Policy Institute, and Non-Resident Scholar, Georgetown University Center for Retirement Initiatives
- Jeff Rosenberger, Ph.D., Chief Operating Officer, Guideline
- Mary Torgerson, Head of Small Business Retirement, Ascensus