IRI outlines 33 proposals in its 2024 blueprint to strengthen retirement security

The Insured Retirement Institute (IRI) has outlined 33 proposals to strengthen retirement security for more workers and retirees.

The proposals, outlined in IRI’s 2024 Blueprint, would do the following:

• 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.
• 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.
• 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 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to write a rule permitting the electronic delivery of shareholder reports for all registered investment companies.

“Our Retirement Security Blueprint proposals will boost retirement security for America’s workers and retirees,” Wayne Chopus, president and CEO of IRI, said. “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.”

Further, the outlook says IRI anticipates significant federal regulatory activity in 2024 from the SEC and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) This includes the DOL’s investment advice proposal and the SEC’s proposed rule on conflicts of interest aimed at predictive data analytics and its swing pricing and hard close rule.

“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. 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.”

At the state level, IRI 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 45th state to adopt this regulation.

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