House Member Neal Questions GAO About Private Credit in Retirement Plans

Representative Richard Neal, a key Democratic voice on retirement issues, wrote on May 8 to the Government Accountability Office requesting it answer a series of questions about the inclusion of alternative investments in defined contribution plans.

Neal, D-Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the tax-policy-writing House Committee on Ways and Means, wrote that the administration’s push to include more alternative assets, including private credit, in defined contribution retirement plans comes as “very concerning” reports of redemption requests have perked up across several retail private credit funds.

Blue Owl and several other fund managers capped redemptions on their retail private credit funds in Q1 after a wave of investors decided to pull money out of the funds that tend to lack the liquidity levels of funds that are solely allocated to public market investments.

The struggles were evident in recent earnings reports, as fund managers such as Apollo Global Management, Blackstone and Blue Owl reported lower returns.

Still, private credit has performed well in recent years, and according to a recent Goldman Sachs report, the asset class has generally outperformed public loans.

Against that backdrop, Neal asked the GAO to address his concerns about private credit’s regulatory regime, considered less strict than the one overseeing public credit investments, and to respond to his concerns about private credit valuations and the investments’ “unknown level of risk.”

The letter follows the Department of Labor’s proposed rule that provided regulators with a fiduciary framework to add alternatives to DC plan investments in a manner compliant with federal regulations, which followed an August 2025 executive order from President Donald Trump that tasked regulators with providing such assistance to fiduciaries.

Daniel Aronowitz, who heads the Department of Labor’s Employee Benefits Security Administration, has repeatedly said the proposed rule is asset-neutral and provides fiduciaries with flexibility and discretion to make investment selections. The Department of Labor is accepting comments on the proposed rule until June 1.

Neal’s inquiry requested information about:

• Alternative asset use in defined benefit plans;
• The prevalence of private credit in current investment options offered in 401(k) plans, such as mutual funds and exchange-traded funds;
• How DC plans address the risks of liquidity and transparency; and
• Potential conflicts of interest among parties in retirement plans.