Consumer Agenda for Retirement Security

Initiative #1: Promote a more adequate and secure private retirement income system

B. Authorize new plan designs that will appeal to both employers and employees, such as new approaches developed by the Conversation on Coverage.

The regulatory and design fundamentals of current retirement plans reflect legal rules and principles that were developed during the early part of the last century in a different legal climate, with a layering of additional rules that reflect the real-world problems that the original rules encountered in the intervening decades.  As a result, we have a helter-skelter array of retirement plan vehicles, none of which were designed with the needs of the current workforce and current employers. 

The new Administration and Congress should consider new plan types to increase pensions and savings for workers not covered by any type of employer savings plan.  This consideration should begin by focusing on models created by the Conversation on Coverage.  The Conversation, a seven-year dialogue process among employers, labor organizations, financial institutions, retiree groups, consumer organizations and think tanks, produced common-ground templates for four new plans designed to be attractive to small- and medium-sized businesses, and to increase savings among employees:

  • The POPP and GAP are plans designed to provide employer-paid, guaranteed pensions to employees, while providing predictability and simplicity to employers.
  • The Retirement Investment Account plan offers a new government-sponsored clearinghouse structure to administer portable savings accounts.
  • The Model T Plan is a new efficient and simple savings plan administered by financial institutions and designed for small businesses.

Regulations and legislation should be developed and supported to make these plans available.

Learn more about the other initiatives in the Consumer Agenda for Retirement Security.

Initiative 1: Promote a more adequate and secure private retirement income system.
Initiative 2: Empower workers to promote their own retirement security.
Initiative 3: Improve retirement savings plans.
Initiative 4: Improve traditional and hybrid pension plans.
Initiative 5: Make retirement plans fairer for workers and their spouses.

Print the Consumer Agenda for Retirement Security [PDF].