Dear NAGDCA Members,
It’s hard to believe it’s been three months since we saw you in Baltimore, and that 2022 is already wrapping up. I live way up north, so for me that means lots of snow and looking forward to time with family to celebrate the holiday season. This year, it also means a fast and furious effort to see the passage of retirement legislation before the end of the year.
As many of you know, NAGDCA has been advocating for several provisions contained in the many retirement bills Congress proposed at different points throughout the year. Issues like changing the “First Day of the Month” rule in 457 plans and the addition of collective investment trusts in 403(b) plans have been NAGDCA Legislative Priorities for years and have a real chance to get addressed before the end of 2022.
With that in mind, the next two weeks will be critical in our efforts to push this legislation across the finish line and your help could be vital. Members of Congress care most about hearing from their constituents, and if any of our provisions are in jeopardy of being left out, we may need your help in advocating for their inclusion. I have already written several of you asking you to contact your representatives and may reach out to more of you in these final days. It will take a collective effort to make sure NAGDCA Priorities are addressed; I hope we can count on you!
While federal legislation will be a focus, we are also offering two important programs in December to address hot topics in the industry. Recent ESG rulemaking at the state and federal level has created a confusing environment for public DC plan sponsors. I’ll sit down with Marla Kreindler from Morgan Lewis in our next Connect Conversation to help our government members understand the current rules and what they need to think about to be successful in the future. Also, several states have been working on automatic enrollment legislation. NAGDCA Board Member Ronda Butler Bell of Maryland will be talking about her experience trying to get legislation passed in her state in an upcoming Peer-to-Peer Exchange event. We would love to see you there.
To further help those of you trying to further understand the complex public sector automatic enrollment environment, we released an Automatic Enrollment Toolkit earlier this week. The Toolkit contains information, data, talking points, model legislation, and just about everything we know about the topic of automatic enrollment. Make sure to check it out whether you are interested in pushing for legislation in your state or just want to know more about the topic.
Finally, the end of the year is also a time for reflection. Looking back on 2022, we saw dozens of you show up to our inaugural D.C. Fly-In, hundreds return to our in-person Annual Conference in Baltimore, and many more tune into our virtual programming throughout the year. Rather than a “return to normal”, it felt like the start of an exciting new era of engagement and connection at NAGDCA. Thank you all for being such wonderful partners in this association, and I can’t wait to see what 2023 has in store!
Happy Holidays,
Matt Petersen
Executive Director
By Groom Law Group
Congressional negotiators are currently working on a spending bill to fund the government after the current appropriation legislation expires on December 16. The precise contours of the spending package – including the duration – are still under discussion. As of this writing, negotiations are stalled over topline numbers, that is, the amounts broadly to be spent on defense and non-defense budget items. The lead Senate appropriators, Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Richard Shelby (R-AL), are both retiring at the end of this Congress, and many are hopeful they will eventually come to an agreement on federal funding. Lawmakers may need to pass a continuing resolution to fund the government for an extra week – until December 23 – to allow time to finish a spending bill.
Congressional staff are increasingly confident that SECURE 2.0 will be included.
SECURE 2.0 has been years in the making, and staff from the four committees of jurisdiction have been meeting three days per week for months now to harmonize the four different retirement bills that make up SECURE 2.0:
- The House Ways and Means Committee’s Securing a Strong Retirement Act of 2022 (H.R. 2954);
- The House Education and Labor Committee’s Retirement Improvement and Savings Enhancement Act (the “RISE Act,” H.R. 5891);
- The Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pension Committee’s Retirement Improvement and Savings Enhancement to Supplement Healthy Investments for the Nest Egg (the “RISE and SHINE Act,” S. 4353); and
- The Senate Finance Committee’s Enhancing American Retirement Now Act (the “EARN Act,” S. 4808).
Text of this consolidated bill has not yet been made public. Two of NAGDCA’s priorities – eliminating the “first day of the month rule” for 457 plans and exempting designated Roth contributions from the lifetime required minimum distribution rules – are very likely to be included. There are also active discussions about including a provision to allow 403(b) plans to invest in collective investment trusts. If included, the provision may differ from the language included in the NAGDCA-endorsed Public Service Retirement Fairness Act (H.R. 2741),introduced by Rep. Jimmy Panetta (D-CA) in May 2021. NAGDCA is monitoring this issue closely and is in regular communication with Congressional staff over this important issue.
SECURE 2.0 is likely to include many popular provisions, such as allowing matching contributions on employee student loan payments, increasing the required minimum distribution age from 72 to 75, updating the Saver’s Credit, and creating a federal “Lost and Found” to help people find inactive retirement accounts. NAGDCA will publish an update with a final look at what’s in SECURE 2.0 if the bill becomes law.
This paper provides an enhanced view of how white label funds fit into plan menus. We also add insights into the understudied public sector defined contribution market. We outline several promising avenues for future research based on these preliminary findings.
In 2020, the Employer Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) and the National Association of Government Defined Contribution Administrators (NAGDCA) created the Public Retirement Research Lab (PRRL) Database (https://www.prrl.org/). Plan sponsors voluntarily join the Public Retirement Research Lab and their recordkeepers transmit de-identified participant-level data on plans’ behalf. These data collected from multiple public plan sponsors through their recordkeepers provide the most comprehensive participant-level information related to the public sector defined contribution industry available for public research. At the plan level, the data provides the complete fund menus for the plans including flagging white label funds. In addition, the names of the investment funds are included so that white label funds incorporating their plan sponsors’ names are also identifiable. Thus, this database is well designed for our research purposes.
AUTOMATIC ENROLLMENT TOOLKIT RELEASED
Is your Plan considering pursuing auto enrollment legislation in your state? The new Auto Enrollment Toolkit provides the information you need to get started. Developed by NAGDCA’s Legislative Committee, the toolkit includes:
-
- an overview and in-depth guide for plan sponsors;
- FAQs;
- a customizable handout for use with policymakers; and
- model legislation to assist in your state’s advocacy efforts.
ANNUAL REPORT PUBLISHED
The 2022 NAGDCA Annual report provides an overview of the association’s membership and activities over the past year. Click below to take a look back at 2022.
ANNUAL MEMBERSHIP SATISFACTION SURVEY
We are conducting a short membership survey and hope you will take five minutes to share feedback with us. Let us know which membership benefits are the most valuable, identify areas where we can improve, and more.
Your feedback is extremely important to us and will help us gauge how we’re currently doing and guide our future programming. Don’t wait – the survey closes Friday, January 6.
RENEW YOUR MEMBERSHIP
We can’t thank you enough for continuing to support NAGDCA with your membership. Renew your membership for 2023 to ensure you don’t miss out on any of the valuable benefits.
Please note, 2023 membership dues must be paid by July 31, 2023 to prevent your membership from lapsing.