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| Benefits & Administration |
| Professor of Economics Proposes Retirement Reform |
| Mounting evidence suggests that reform of both
the current structure and tax-code treatment of retirement accounts could
stimulate greater savings for many Americans, a paper suggests. In a new
Hamilton Project discussion paper, John N. Friedman, Professor of Economics at
Brown University, proposes two related reforms to the current system of
retirement savings accounts. The proposals include universal retirement accounts
and a change to the treatment of tax incentives.Read more > |
| It’s not only plan participants that are prone
to inertia. Plan sponsors, too, can find it a challenge to step up their
retirement plan designs. All the tools plan sponsors need to get people saving
already exist, Anne Ackerley, head of the defined contribution group in the
U.S. and Canada at BlackRock says, and even fairly simple actions—raising
defaults, the use of auto features—can quantify and illustrate for plan
sponsors how plan outcomes can be affected.Read more > |
| No Rush to Self-Insure Health Benefits Yet |
| Since enactment of the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, there has been speculation that the law will
result in an increasing number of smaller employers offering self-insured
plans. So far (up to 2013, the latest data available), there is no evidence
that they are doing so, according to new research by the Employee Benefit
Research Institute (EBRI).Read more > |
| Automatic IRAs Would Help Retirement Crisis |
| Whether automatic IRAs (individual retirement
accounts) could significantly increase retirement readiness and reduce the
national retirement savings deficit depends largely on age, the default
contribution rate and the opt-out rate
(the percentage of eligible employees who choose not to participate), according
to research by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). The EBRI
analysis found that in the best-case participation scenario (assuming no opt
outs), the introduction of an auto-IRA for households currently ages 35 to 39
working for small employers would increase the probability of a “successful”
retirement by 8.4%.Read more > |
