IRI UNVEILS 2024 RETIREMENT SECURITY BLUEPRINT

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Insured Retirement Institute (IRI) released its 2024 Retirement Security Blueprint with 33 proposals to enhance and strengthen retirement security for more of America’s workers and retirees.

“Our Retirement Security Blueprint proposals will boost retirement security for America’s workers and retirees,” said Wayne Chopus, President and CEO of IRI. “These policies will help expand opportunities to save by improving access to workplace retirement plans and facilitate the availability of lifetime income products to retirement savers.”

IRI anticipates significant federal regulatory activity in 2024 from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL).

“We have repeatedly told DOL that their retirement security investment advice proposal is deeply flawed,” Chopus said. “It ignores the recent strengthening of federal and state consumer protection laws that render this proposal unnecessary and redundant, causing needless harm to millions of retirement savers who will lose access to critical guidance from financial professionals.”

IRI is expecting final rules on, among others, the SEC’s proposed conflict of interest rules aimed at predictive data analytics (PDA) and artificial intelligence (AI) and a “swing pricing and hard close” rule.

“If the SEC and DOL adopt these rules as proposed, they will have a profoundly negative effect on retirement savers and impede the progress toward improved retirement security that Congress and IRI worked so hard to deliver with the Secure Act and the Secure 2.0 Act,” Chopus said.

Included in IRI’s 2024 Blueprint are proposals to:

• Require most businesses to offer employees access to a workplace retirement plan.
• Allow employers to re-enroll employees into a workplace retirement plan every three years if those employees initially opted out of a plan. Employees could choose to opt out again.
• Eliminate a regulatory barrier that effectively prohibits using protected, guaranteed lifetime income solutions with delayed liquidity features, such as a qualified default investment alternative.
• Eliminate the disparity in treatment under current securities law for 403(b) retirement plan participants to allow them access to more cost-efficient investment options that other retirement plan participants have.
• Allow for a diverse slate of indexed and variable annuity contracts with guaranteed benefits to be eligible to be treated as qualifying longevity annuity contracts (QLACs).
• Establish a “qualified payout option” (Q-PON) that requires employers who have at least ten employees and have provided a plan for at least three years to offer a combination of income and payout solutions that participants can select from at retirement.
• Establish a default distribution option for defined contribution participants by deeming that an employer satisfies fiduciary duties under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) so long as participants are notified of the default annuitization option and can opt out at the time of distribution.
• Direct the SEC to write a rule permitting the electronic delivery of shareholder reports for all registered investment companies.

At the state level, IRI and its industry partners will continue efforts to persuade the remaining states to adopt the National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ model regulation that holds insurance professionals to a best interest standard of conduct when they recommend annuities to their clients. California recently became the 45^th state to adopt this critical consumer protection regulation.

“Our changing national demographics mean more consumers will need access to retirement plans and reliable retirement income from the savings those plans generate,” Chopus said.

“Our proposals will make substantial progress toward reducing the anxiety and insecurity America’s workers and retirees have about accumulating sufficient retirement savings that will last throughout their golden years.”

# # #

Contact: Dan Zielinski