2022 Retirement Summit

Joined by representatives of the U.S. Department of Labor and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Employee Benefit Research Institute hosted a full-day Retirement Summit on December 1, 2022. The event convened high-ranking thought leaders in the retirement industry and employers, consultants, policymakers, regulators, and academics to tackle the important challenge of creating a more integrated, equitable, and effective U.S. retirement system.

Topics of the Summit were: 1) improving individuals’ access to the retirement system; 2) reducing leakage from the retirement system; 3) helping people spend down their assets in retirement; and 4) improving the investment outcomes for American workers within the retirement system.

Agenda

8:30 a.m. to 8:50 a.m. — Breakfast

In-Person & Live-Streamed Public Sessions:

8:50 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. — Kick-Off and Intro: Outlining the Challenge

• Neil Bradley, Chief Policy Officer, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
• Lori Lucas, President & CEO, Employee Benefit Research Institute
• Pablo Antolin, Principal Economist at the Private Pension Unit of the OECD Financial Affairs Division

9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. — Big Ideas Panel 1: Access to the System

How do we broadly re-envision the structure of the private and public retirement systems so that together they cover American workers—including self-employed workers?

Moderator: Suzanne Woolley, Bloomberg

Speakers:

• Martin Walsh, Secretary of Labor, U. S. Department of Labor
• Ed Murphy, President & CEO, Empower
• Katie Selenski, Executive Director, CalSavers
  

10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. — Big Ideas Panel 2: Leakage From the System

How do we address leakage from the retirement system through loans, withdrawals, and cashouts, including the larger financial wellness needs of American workers, including debt, medical expenses, and emergency savings?

Moderator: Robert Powell, finStream.tv

Speakers:

• Dan Laszlo, Chief Executive Officer, Millennium Trust
• Steve Neeleman, Vice Chairman and Founder, HealthEquity
• Dimitra Hannon, Global strategist, Benefits Leader, Total Rewards, Mergers and Acquisitions, Boeing
• Punam Keller, Charles Henry Jones Third Century Professor of Management; Faculty Director, Center for Business, Government, & Society, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth

11:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. — Break

12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. — Big Ideas Panel 3: Spending in Retirement

How do we tackle the needs of a growing population of retirees as they draw down from the retirement system?

Moderator: Anne Tergesen, Wall Street Journal

Speakers:

• Anne Ackerley, Managing Director, Head of BlackRock's Retirement Group, BlackRock
• Dan Houston, Chairman, CEO, and President, Principal
• Ken Mungan, Chairman of the Board, Milliman
• Rich Nuzum, President, Investments and Retirement, Mercer

1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. — Networking Lunch & Ray Lillywhite Awards: Senators Portman and Cardin; Eric Stevenson, President of Nationwide Retirement as Moderator

2:00 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. — Break

In-Person, Private Sessions:

2:15 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. — Academic and Consumer Group Perspectives

In this session, we will hear from leading academics as well as the foremost retirement experts at several key organization that represent consumer interests on the morning’s key themes of access, leakage, and spending in retirement. What are the challenges and opportunities? What are the systemic improvements that could be addressed? What will it take to move forward?

Moderator: Toni Brown, Retirement Strategist, Capital Group

• David John, Senior Strategic Policy Advisor, AARP
• Jeffrey R. Brown, Josef and Margot Lakonishok Professor of Business and Dean of the College of Business at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Suzanne B. Shu, Dean of Faculty & Research, Cornell University, SC Johnson College of Business
• Alane Dent, Strategic Advisor, Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement (WISER)

3:15 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. — Roundtables:  How do we improve the retirement system in a holistic fashion that will lead to better outcomes for all U.S. workers

Roundtables 1–3  — Access: This roundtable addresses gaps to retirement plan access, and how to address them, including the role of Pre-Tax and Roth 401(k)s, MEPs, PEPs, State IRAs, HSAs, DB plans and more. The roundtable will also address DEI topics, such access for minorities and women owning small business, and other constituents.

Roundtables 4–7 — Spending: This roundtable examines considerations around spending in retirement and how the system should address them. What is the role of annuities and guaranteed income, stable value and “retirement spending investment menus,” RMDs, retirement paychecks and other spending help? How do we make existing and new solutions affordable, understandable, attractive?

Roundtable 8 — Investing: This roundtable considers what retirement investment vehicles of the future should look like, including collective investment trusts in 403(b) plans, unitized DB plans in 401(k) menus, alternative asset classes, target date funds and managed account, in-plan annuities, and more.

Roundtables 9 & 10 — Leakage: This roundtable starts with understanding the key areas of retirement system leakage: including cashouts, loans, and withdrawals from the retirement system. How much is lost from the system? What are the real issues around leakage? What is the role of emergency savings vehicles in stemming leakage? HSAs and other vehicles to address medical spending needs? Auto-portability? Loan insurance?

4:30 p.m. to 5:15 p.m. — Readout from the Roundtables

5:15 p.m. — Networking reception and wrap-up presentation(s): Identifying next steps