Focus on Funds: A Review of ICI's Retirement Summit
A Review of ICI’s Retirement Summit
The April 17, 2014, edition of Focus on Funds features ICI President and CEO Paul Schott Stevens, who summarizes the key issues and research covered at ICI’s recent Retirement Summit.
Transcript
Stephanie Ortbals-Tibbs, Director, ICI Media Relations: Welcome to Focus on Funds, the Investment Company Institute’s weekly roundup of industry news, ICI activities, and research findings. ICI continues to advance the dialogue around American preparedness for retirement, recently convening an academic conference that looked at the issue from every angle.
ICI President and CEO Paul Schott Stevens, who attended the summit, offers an overview of the day’s discussion.
Paul Schott Stevens, ICI President and CEO: How adequately are Americans preparing for retirement? That’s a critical question for individuals and our country as a whole.
ICI recently hosted a daylong retirement summit featuring some of the nation’s leading scholars, with the goal of having a more fully informed public dialogue about retirement preparedness and related policy issues.
We deeply appreciate all those who took the time to share their views and to discuss various approaches to these issues.
The discussion included insights into matters that are closely tied to retirement, like:
- the status of the Social Security system,
- what aging Americans face in terms of healthcare costs,
- retirement asset accumulation and consumption data,
- longevity risks,
- the need for financial education, and
- other variables that go to long-term financial security.
With about half of all defined contribution plan and IRA assets invested through mutual funds, it is amongst ICI’s top priorities to ensure policymakers, regulators, and the public have access to the full spectrum of information about retirement preparedness.
Overall, the day’s discussions and research revealed a range of retiree experiences and quite a variety of views.
And, while the U.S. retirement system has an enormous number of strengths and successes to its credit, we need to build on those to make it the very best system possible to reach all working Americans.
Stephanie Ortbals-Tibbs: A wide array of materials from the conference, including audio of most panel discussions, is on the website.
That’s this week in funds. See you next week.