As speculation mounts over President Trump’s planned appearance in Charlotte tomorrow, the expectation is that the Retirement Enhancement and Savings Act of 2018 (RESA) will soon be signed into law. While Vestwell believes strongly in the spirit of the bill and what it’s trying to accomplish – making good retirement plans affordable and accessible to companies of all sizes – the bill fails to solve many retirement plan challenges.
Small businesses haven’t historically embraced 401(k)’s out of concerns for fiduciary liability exposure, litigation, fees, and administrative burdens, amongst others. RESA turns to Multiple Employer Plans (MEPs) as a solution because MEPs allow small employers to pool together to share expenses. The belief is that small businesses will be more likely to offer retirement plans once they can offload some fiduciary responsibility and enjoy traditionally “large plan” costs.
Unfortunately, there are still some shortcomings in the bill that lead to missed opportunities and confusion. The main ones we’ve identified are around:
The good news is, options exist to better support small plan sponsors even without RESA. The advent of tech-forward retirement platforms (like Vestwell) bring solutions to the issues of cost, fiduciary responsibility, administrative burden, and transparency. They also address many of the challenges of RESA. Because a modern-day retirement platform doesn’t require the pooling of resources, a plan sponsor can enjoy custom plan designs and pricing, tailored to its workforce, rather than having to compromise based off the collective needs of the MEP. And since technology automates many expensive processes, plan sponsors are afforded economies of scale comparable to (if not better than) what an MEP would bring. As a result, a company can benefit from the personalization, strong customer service, competitive pricing, fiduciary oversight, and transparency that all plan sponsors and participants deserve.
So, while it is our mission to support the healthy retirement of all Americans, we want to ensure they don’t just have access to a plan…but that they have access to the right one.