Chamber of Commerce Makes Retirement Benefits Suggestions

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce released a white paper offering guidelines on initiatives to bolster the voluntary employment-based retirement benefits system and retirement security for workers.

“Private Retirement Benefits in the 21st Century: A Path Forward” lays out a path to continue the success of the private employer-provided retirement system and increase retirement security for millions of workers.


Specifically, it recommends: 

 

  • Encouraging employers to create and maintain retirement plans by expanding plan sponsorship among small businesses, streamlining notice requirements and allowing for greater use of electronic disclosures, reforming multi-employer defined benefit funding rules to prevent bankruptcy among small employers, reforming single-employer defined benefit funding rules to allow for greater predictability and clarifying the hybrid plan rules and regulations; 
  • Encouraging greater individual savings by pushing for the use of automatic plan features, promoting financial education for retirement and helping preserve retirement assets; and 
  • Implementing strategies to make retirement assets last by encouraging additional distribution options, addressing required minimum distribution rules, encouraging employers to offer voluntary products and eliminating barriers to phased retirement. 

“This white paper offers detailed guidelines to help employers create and maintain retirement plans, and for workers to increase their savings. It also identifies ways to make retirement assets last for future retirees,” said Randy Johnson, senior vice president for labor, immigration & employee benefits at the Chamber. 

In a statement, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation Director Josh Gotbaum supported the white paper. “When business talks about ideas that could make workers more secure, we welcome the conversation. We all need to work, both to preserve the benefits of the pensions we have and to find new ways to provide for a secure retirement,” he said.  

The report can be downloaded from http://www.uschamber.com/reports/private-retirement-benefits-21st-century-path-forward.

 

«