NAGDCA Members –
I want to thank everyone who attended the Annual Conference in New Orleans. We had 978 attendees, our second highest total ever! A special thanks from me to all of the people who made it happen, including:
- The AMR staff
- 2019 Annual Conference Committee:
- Steve Toole, formerly with North Carolina Retirement Systems
- Rob Boehmer, State of Nevada
- Vincent Galindo, Hyas Group
- Prabh Kaur, ICMA-RC
- Davetta Lee, State of Mississippi
- Jacob Peacock, AndCo Consulting
- Melanie Walker, Segal Consulting
- All moderators and speakers
- NAGDCA Executive Board members
- Matt Petersen, NAGDCA Executive Director
- Paul Beddoe, NAGDCA Director of Government Affairs
The powerful and moving closing keynote speaker, Capt. Al Fuentes, was a fitting tribute to 9/11 and an inspiring end to an amazing conference.
Looking ahead, I am honored to serve as NAGDCA’s President this coming year. I want to acknowledge the Executive Board for all their support, commitment and passion in moving the organization’s strategic initiatives forward.
I especially want to thank Cindy Rehmeier for your leadership this past year as you guided NAGDCA through a very successful 2019 Capitol Hill visit, secured the organization’s first employee by adding Matt Petersen as our Executive Director, and advanced the cause of public sector plan administrators across the country. Way to go, Cindy!
It is also with a heavy heart that we must say farewell to Past President, Keith Overly who attended the last board meeting of his six-year commitment during the Annual Conference in New Orleans. His commitment to advancing the Annual Benchmarking Survey has made a tremendous impact on the industry that will be felt for years to come. And finally, I want to thank Ben Taylor from Callan Associates for his participation as an industry representative on the board over the past two years. His service and insights were truly appreciated, and his presence in the board room will be missed.
This month NAGDCA has published our Fourth Annual Benchmarking Report entitled Perspectives in Practice – A Benchmarking Initiative for Public Sector Defined Contribution Plans. The report includes data that will help the public sector defined contribution industry understand trends and identify issues to better serve our plan participants. The new NAGDCA Benchmarking Survey is out on the website for you to access here. The detailed report, available only to NAGDCA members, presents a comprehensive analysis of key operating data from the government defined contribution industry, based on confidential surveys submitted by 98 individual plans representing 65 plan sponsors, $177 billion in plan assets and 4.2 million individual plan participants.
In 2020, NAGDCA is taking an exciting step forward in our benchmarking initiative. As Matt spoke about at the Annual Conference, NAGDCA will be partnering with EBRI to improve the quality of our data collection and analysis and reduce the time burden on plan sponsors for providing data. The result will be the most complete benchmarking data in the public sector defined contribution industry.
Last, but definitely not least, I want to extend a warm welcome to our new government board members, Darlene Malaney and Kellie Hiers, and Ketul Thaker, our incoming Industry President. I look forward to working with them in the year to come as we continue to lead NAGDCA to a successful future. For more information on these amazing people, please see their bios on the NAGDCA website.
It’s an exciting time to be a part of the NAGDCA family. Our committees and staff have begun the work of making our strategic priorities a reality, and I can’t wait for the year ahead!
Sincerely,
Sandy Blair, NAGDCA President
Director, Retirement Readiness
California State Teachers’ Retirement System
Retirement Legislation in Impeachment Season
Last week I was literally a lobbyist. I had a scheduled meeting with professional staff for the House Ways and Means Committee – in the first-floor elevator lobby of the Longworth House Office Building.
To be fair, our meeting just happened to be scheduled at the same time that the House impeachment hearings were beginning. And House leaders had decided to give the Intelligence Committee the use of the grand Ways and Means Committee hearing room in the Longworth Building for these high-profile hearings. The resulting influx of Intelligence Committee members, staff, press and the public meant that we needed to be flexible about meeting space.
I share this anecdote to illustrate a point: while Members of Congress, the media and the public are understandably focused on the impeachment process, much legislative and policy work continues to move along behind the scenes.
For example, the annual budget and appropriations process continues to inch ahead. While Congress was able to come to a budget agreement on the top-line defense and non-defense spending levels last summer, they were not able to pass any of the twelve appropriations bills before the start of FY 2020 on October 1. With the first FY 2020 continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government running expiring November 20, leaders are planning to pass a second CR through December 20 to give them a few more weeks to reach agreement on at least some of the bills.
This is significant for the retirement industry, because the popular House-passed Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act (H.R. 1994) remains stalled in the Senate. SECURE Act supporters in the Senate are telling NAGDCA that they are hoping to attach it to one of these “must-pass” year-end spending bills.
And as we discussed in the Washington Update session at the NAGDCA Annual Conference in New Orleans, we are talking to members of the House Ways and Means Committee about introducing bipartisan stand-alone bills to enact NAGDCA priorities. If one of your representatives serves on Ways and Means, we would love to work with you to ask them to help us. In fact, that is what we were doing in that meeting in the Longworth elevator lobby – urging support for NAGDCA’s proposal to allow 403(b) plans to use collective investment trusts (CITs).
Paul BeddoeNew – Members Only Platforms Launching Soon
In early December, NAGDCA will be rolling out a new member database and member forums. The new platforms will streamline navigation while providing more robust member profiles and directories allowing you to easily access information about your fellow members and the plans they sponsor.
Keep an eye out for a communication from NAGDCA with instructions for setting up your new member account. To ensure you don’t miss any communications, ask your IT department to add the domain, @memberclicks-mail.net, to your safe senders list.
2019 Annual Conference
NAGDCA’s 40th Annual Conference was a huge success with over 975 individuals attending, which marks the 2nd highest attendance of all time. The event brought together government and industry members from around the country to review best practices, industry innovations, and network with peers in the public sector defined contribution plan arena. Over four days, attendees were able to participate in over 10 sessions covering topics from storytelling techniques to fiduciary best practices. Click here to access presentations and videos from the conference.
2019 Annual Conference
NAGDCA Headquarters will be closed Thursday, November 28 and Friday, November 29 for the Thanksgiving Holiday.