Plan Sponsors Rally Behind Lifetime Income

Plan sponsors tend to support guaranteed income payments in retirement as contributing to positive plan outcomes, according to MetLife’s 2026 Lifetime Income Poll, released today.

Defined contribution plan sponsors responding to the insurer’s survey expressed high awareness of lifetime income public policy, broad support for policies that promote guaranteed income, and confidence that lifetime income options are positioned for growth, the poll found.

Nine out of 10 respondents to MetLife’s poll said they believed the core purpose of a DC plan should be to serve participants as a source of income in retirement. Meanwhile, data from the 2026 PLANSPONSOR Plan Benchmarking Report revealed 73.4% of plan sponsors said it was important that their plan offer participants a means to guarantee some level of retirement income.

“Plan sponsors are increasingly defining retirement success by income, not by account balance,” says Roberta Rafaloff, MetLife’s head of institutional income annuities. “They’re no longer asking, ‘Does retirement income matter?’ They’re saying, ‘Yeah, it matters a lot.’”

Awareness of Public Policy

Plan sponsors’ responses to the poll indicated they have a strong awareness of public policy related to lifetime income. Nearly all (95%) reported being knowledgeable about the efforts of public policymakers and the Departments of Labor and the Treasury to strengthen workers’ retirement security—including 69% who characterized themselves as being extremely or very knowledgeable on the topic.

When asked about lifetime income legislation, 87% of plan sponsors said they had some level of familiarity with the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019, including 62% who reported being extremely or very familiar with the law.

Thinking about specific provisions of the SECURE Act and the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022—which built on the 2019 law—90% of plan sponsors said they were most familiar with the safe harbor for plan sponsors’ annuity carrier selection, which provides employers protection when they select an insurer to provide an annuity as a distribution option in their defined contribution plan.

In addition, 87% of plan sponsors said they were familiar with the lifetime income disclosure provision of the original SECURE Act, which requires annual plan statements to include the monthly income equivalent of an employee’s savings in the plan. The same share of respondents reporting believing lifetime income disclosures on annual plan statements have been helpful for plan participants to understand the value of their account balances as lifetime income.

Of plan sponsor respondents, 82% expressed familiarity with SECURE 2.0’s changes to qualified longevity annuity contracts, which included: a flat-dollar lifetime cap on the maximum premium, instead of the lesser of 25% of retirement savings or $145,000; a higher dollar-per-person lifetime limit; and clarity that survivor benefits in the case of divorce and trial periods are permitted, but not required.

Only 16% of respondents to PLANSPONSOR’s 2025 Defined Contribution Survey said they offered in-plan insurance-based products that guarantee income, and 0.2% said they anticipated being able to offer them by June 30.

Support for Specific Policies

As far as specific policies to back, 66% of respondents said they would support a SECURE 3.0 package that included legislation advancing retirement income. That figure rose to 75% among respondents who described themselves as extremely or very knowledgeable about past efforts by policymakers and regulators to strengthen retirement security.

“We’re trying to gauge plan sponsors’ willingness for another retirement package,” Rafaloff says. “There is a lot of interest. So what [sponsors] can do now is take these findings and present them in Washington.”

Surveyed plan sponsors favored policy proposals including annuity tax incentives, mandatory offering of annuities and default annuitization. More than half of respondents supported each of the suggested proposals: 79% reported favoring a limited tax incentive for participants who annuitize all or part of their savings; 59% said they support a federal mandate that DC plans offer lifetime income annuities as a distribution option; and 54% endorsed defaulting a portion of participants’ retirement savings into a guaranteed lifetime income product.

Only 9% of respondents to PLANSPONSOR’s 2025 DC Survey said their in-plan retirement income solution was, or will be, connected or embedded in the plan’s default investment option, while 20.8% said it was not or will not be. A significant majority—70.2% of respondents—reported being unsure.

Of respondents to MetLife’s poll, 82% said they believe encouraging workers to consider guaranteed lifetime income options—such as by facilitating longevity insurance and partial annuitization—represented sound public policy, up from 62% who said so in the 2016 poll.

“Back when we first did this poll [in 2016], income was really viewed as optional,” Rafaloff says. “But now we’re seeing plan sponsors say lump sums alone really aren’t sufficient.”

Confidence About Growth

Plan sponsors also reported strong confidence that lifetime income options are poised for growth. Among all respondents, 86% said they expected the importance of offering lifetime income options to increase in the future. Among organizations already offering a guaranteed lifetime income option, the conviction was near universal: 98% said they believe the importance of such products will continue to rise.

Convictions about the high value of lifetime income were particularly high among sponsors of plans with at least $1 billion in assets (93%), as well as those in the manufacturing (92%) and finance (91%) sectors.

The MetLife 2026 Lifetime Income Poll was fielded from February 3 through 16 among 242 DC plan sponsors.