[Travis] 401(k)s are one of the key ways that Americans save for retirement. And while they expect most of their retirement income will come from their employer-sponsored plan, an Allianz study found that two-thirds of Americans worried that their plan will run out of money during their retirement. In recent years, we've had legislation that helps give people the option of putting some of their 401(k) funds into an annuity. As this option becomes more common in employer plans, you can expect your clients to be coming to you with many questions. And today's guest is here to help us with the answers. Welcome to "Rebuilding Retirement: Navigating a New Reality with your clients," a podcast series from Allianz life Insurance Company of North America. I'm Travis Walker. Our guest today, Bob Toth, is an employee benefits attorney who specializes in retirement income. Bob has practiced employee benefits law for 40 years, focusing on the design, administration and distribution of financial products and services for retirement plans. Today, Bob is gonna walk us through the changing expectations for employer-sponsored retirement plans, what you should know to offer your clients guidance, and finally, we're going to be looking ahead to what Bob sees as the next innovation coming to employer retirement benefits. So let's get to it. Bob, welcome to Rebuilding Retirement.
[Bob] Hello, Travis. Good to see you.
[Travis] So first things first, how did we get here? Like where do we start in the story about retirement benefits through employers and why are employers so linked to retirement?
[Bob] Well, I mean, this goes way back. I mean, the first retirement plan, an employer-based retirement plan that we all know of is probably like 1875, right? And so it was employer funded. They were all defined benefit programs where the advisor had very little to do with it, that the employer just put up a trust-funded plan, and they made contributions to it, much like the purchase of an annuity contract, where they would make contributions and the employers that those plans would then pay to employees, the benefit, whatever was accumulated under their plan. So again, it's been around for 150 years, pension plans. 401(k) plans themselves weren't around really, I mean, 403 plans actually were established in like 1918. So they've been around a little over a hundred years. But they were actually set up as the individual purchase of single life annuities by the employer. So it wasn't really, these things were not asset accumulation plans. They were all designed to provide a monthly benefit to the employees, which would tide them over after retirement. And over the years, pension plans became very much a part of the implied employment contract between employers and their employees. I mean, Phyllis Borzi actually put it once, well, once about 20 years ago, as we're talking about this stuff, she says, "A good job includes good retirement." It became part of the employment culture that if you're really going to have a serious full-time employment, employers need to fund retirement plans as well as part of that. So we've been there, again, since 1875 or so. And again, these things are first established as monthly payment programs coming from the employer. The employer would not be out there accumulating assets for the employee. So financial advisors were nowhere to be seen when this was happening. The 401(k) plan really didn't come into place until, oh, I believe it was the 1976 Act. And until ERISA came around, I'm sorry. The private sharing plans became more and more in vogue in the mid seventies or so, and there were a few, a handful of large employers, I worked for one of them, where they actually didn't have a pension plan. They had decided that they were just going to have a profit sharing plan where they would put a portion of the company's profits into this trust deed asset accumulation plan, which was controlled by the employer. Now, the company I had worked for was really interesting because they had found out that, come the early eighties, that this profit sharing plan that they had established was being abused by employees. The employees really would run through their money. They had actually ... so one of the first jobs I had when I joined this employer back in 85 or so, we had to establish what is called a gratuitous retirement plan for these former employees of this company, because we had employees going out and taking this big chunk of money in their profit sharing plan and doing things like buying RVs that would rust out or buying gas stations with leaking underground storage tanks. And it was an embarrassment for the company where a significant number of their former employees and retirees were now on the welfare roles in the county, because they would take their accumulated account balance in their profit sharing plan and actually spend it and waste it, and they didn't have the money anymore. So we didn't actually establish the first pension plan for that company, which is really unusual, until the 1980s. So how we got here is that, where we are now, so when you say how we got here, so now we're in the circumstance where these things, these defined benefit pension plans that we all thought were sliced bread, right? And they're so critical to participants good life after retirement, is that they're a quirky thing. We're finding out the defined benefit plans rely upon an employer always to be there. Companies go out of business. That's all they're designed to do there. That's what competition's all about. So when they go out of business, oftentimes their pension plans shut down. And there are a lot of bad things that happen when that happens. So one of the classic defined benefit stories is what led to ERISA was Studebaker. ERISA passed in '74. Studebaker was a car manufacturer up in South Bend in Elkhart, Indiana, where they had a defined benefit pension plan. The company was having a lot of struggles. What had happened is that the company decided to borrow money from the pension fund to keep the company's business going. But then they went out of business and there were 4,000 employees, and they were left without a pension. That was the straw that broke the camel's back for ERISA. And that's when ERISA was passed in order to protect employee rights. Well, that actually was the sign of the times that defined benefit plans, as valuable as they are, were difficult to fund, difficult to run, and they depended upon the employer always being there. So what we have seen in the past 20 years particularly, is a serious decline in defined benefit programs, and instead, a huge increase in 401(k) plans, profit sharing plans, 403 plans, where instead of putting money into a trust fund that will fund a future payout of benefits, employers started funding asset accumulation vehicles for employees. And they would rely upon that to help fund their retirement once they left the company. And so, for the advisor, think about that for the advisor. So now we're moving from a spot where you're getting a set amount of money, participants getting a set amount of money per month, supposedly for the rest of their lives, being replaced. Now they have a chunk of money which they can run out of, unless they seek the advice of somebody like the advisor to help them figure out how to manage that pile of money that will last for the rest of their lives. So that's how we got there. It's been, it's been kind of like this gradual sort of, evolution on retirement. So where we are now is that, of course, defined contribution plans are the dominant form of retirement plans.
[Travis] What are some of the biggest changes you've seen in the employee benefit space since the 1980s?
[Bob] The biggest thing is the shift from the employer's responsibility for determining to managing lifetime income from the employer to the employee. You think about an old DB plan, an old defined benefit plan. You'd get, guaranteed, $200 a month for the rest of life, and you'd just get a check coming in the mail all the time. With those plans now virtually disappearing, the responsibility, instead of having a pile of money there, instead of the $200 check a month or $500 check a month, you now have the responsibility for, number one, getting your money in there, but number two, managing the payout of the investment and the payout of those monies. That has probably been the biggest shift, is the heavier burden has been placed on the plan participant, one, for acting responsibly in accumulating the benefits, and then not accessing those benefits during your employment and spending it on things like you wanna have a big wedding for your daughter, right? So you go take a hardship distribution or a loan from your plan. And it reduces your retirement benefit. So that has been the most fundamental shift, is that, more responsibility moving from the employer to the employee in trying to figure out how to have a secure retirement.
[Travis] Gotcha. So, speaking of secure, and we'll get to that, but first we're gonna fast forward to 2019 and the 401(k) is king. How did the original SECURE Act come about and what were the pressures that led to that legislation?
[Bob] Well, the SECURE Act, one, was a dozen years in the making. But there were a number of very fundamental changes that the law brought in, but it did actually, it was the first one to actually address some of the fundamental issues we had in trying to provide lifetime income from these 401(k) plans to replicate in some way the guarantees that you're used to be getting out of your defined benefit plan. So we argued about all these terms in SECURE 1.0, like I said, a dozen years. One of the biggest issues had to do is, should an employer who's a fiduciary to a plan, if they choose an annuity contract, from an insurance company, in order to provide lifetime income to a 401(k) plan participant, and the insurance company goes belly up 10 years from now, the employer didn't wanna be held responsible for that. So that had always been in the background, trying to figure that one out. There's also been this huge problem is, if let's say, if you start establishing a guarantee underneath your 401(k) plan, you're gathering some lifetime income credits and things like that, but the employer goes and terminates their plan or they fire the insurance company, what happens to your guarantee? And the portability of all that, that was a big problem. And then one of the biggest issues out of SECURE 1.0 that occurs in annuitization, was there were a pile of economists saying, "We need to let people know what their 401(k) account balance will translate into as a monthly payment." I call it the Six Pack of Beer a Month theory.
[Travis] Oh, let's hear about this. Certainly I've sat up in my chair, myself.
[Bob] I argued with these economists, I was part of this whole process that went on for SECURE 1.0, is I said, "Look, we've got a lot of things, other things we've gotta do." There are a lot of technical rules that we need to be able to implement to make a 401(k) plan into a DB plan to make it work as providing lifetime income. And there's a host of people out there that believe, "Well, as long as we tell people that their 401(k) account balance, how much that's going to buy them in a monthly pension," I said, "Yeah, for most of these people it's gonna be a six pack of beer a month." I said, "We have, there other things we can spend our time on here." Just like, well, I lost that argument and that, so it became a part, one of the central parts of SECURE, and it's been very successful, by the way, I'll admit when I've been wrong. So what is happening now and started a couple of years ago, you see your clients, the advisor's clients, they'll get a 401(k) statement and on it will be an estimate of how much of a monthly benefit will their current account balance provide when they go to return. So those were the key parts of SECURE 1.0 and SECURE did a bunch of other things, but those three things really, really goosed the market.
[Travis] Gotcha.
[Bob] What it did, it made employers more interested in pursuing this because it reduced their liabilities and it gave more sure, from the business side, from the insurance company side, it give them more solid ground to stand on to do certain things in order to make these things work. So SECURE has really been, was a watershed moment for lifetime income, because we've been trying to do this prior to SECURE, I wrote a paper back in 2007 about how you actually turn a 401(k) plan into a defined benefit program, so we've been trying for a dozen years prior to that to get some interest in the marketplace. Well, there has been an explosion since SECURE has passed with those three simple rules, there has been a tremendous interest by employers as well as insurance companies to provide products that were made for 401(k) plans. It's more than just a retail annuity. They actually have to be designed a little bit different, and we'll talk about that in a few minutes I'm sure, but so it really created, it was a watershed moment, SECURE 1.0 for sure.
[Travis] Gotcha. So I think people are gonna be able to buy that six pack of beer after all. And you have the SECURE Act.
[Bob] Yeah, yeah. So it scares them actually, the economists were telling me that we gotta scare them a little bit. Say, look, when you see that, you think you've got that account balance there, it looks pretty good. Well, when you tell them, it really only gets you a six pack of red, white and blue every month then they start having to scare them into saving.
[Travis] Yeah. You gotta scare them. I don't wanna live in a beerless society, so the SECURE Act is so nice we had to do it twice. We have the 2.0 version. It comes, how have these SECURE Acts accelerated the provision and acceptance of guaranteed lifetime income products in the defined contribution plans.
[Bob] For the advisor, when you think about it, the SECURE 2.0 was actually a nerd's dream, right? There are probably, I mean, SECURE 2.0 was a huge, there were, I don't know, 90 different provisions in it. About a dozen of them actually affect lifetime income. But honestly, almost none of them meant anything for anybody who wants to receive money or a plan sponsor who wants to adopt a plan. There are highly technical rules in SECURE 2.0. There are about a dozen of them that applied to lifetime income, but they applied to geeks like me who actually build these products, right. So there are some technical problems with that -
[Travis] Trump, the builder.
[Bob] Try to put an annuity, trying to put an annuity into a 401(k) plan, right? There's some technical problems with that. And so one thing that 2.0 did is try to provide the answer to a lot of these technical questions. So the key watershed moment still remains SECURE 1, the first SECURE. SECURE 2 actually made it easier for people like me to actually design these programs that will make it really possible to have innovative products, that you can, now, the plan sponsors can now adopt in their 401(k) plans. Before under the DB plan, you got your $500 a month for the rest of your life and that was it, right? It's inflexible; when you die, it died, except for the joint survivor benefit. You had no, rarely had you any inflation protection. So, but with what 2.0 did
1.0 did is enabled us to actually start putting in things like the living benefits like the GLWBs and the GMIBs and the enhanced death benefits that have been dominant in the marketplace for years in the individual marketplace. We have now been able to design those kind of benefits into a 401(k) plan to take away the ugliness and the sting and the inflexibility of that old pension benefit. So the value of the 401(k) lifetime income benefit is that it can look a lot like that retail product advisors have been selling for years. Which we do accommodate the individual's financial needs better.
[Travis] I just wanted you to elaborate a little bit on that switch from the defined benefit plans to the defined contribution plans, that big shift, and how did it change the ways that financial professionals work with clients?
[Bob] Oh, it's dramatic. In the past, under the defined benefit plan, a financial advisor would know how much per month your client would be receiving from the company's pension plan. It's called $500 a month. And you can plan around that and you could establish your plans all around around that. And it's done. And it's simple as that. But now the financial advisor, I think is now gonna serve a central role under the 401(k) plans that are now providing the lifetime income. In a couple of ways; first of all, you have to determine, you have to help them figure out how much of their account balances should currently be allocated to these lifetime income programs, which are actually set up as investments in their 401(k) plan. I mean, it's not like a set benefit under the plan. These are investments. So they need the investment advisor to help them understand what percentage of their own assets should be in the investment accounts, should be allocated to the purchase of the lifetime income product. And then you raised the question, Travis, of when do you start doing it? And is it worth it? And then, where do I move it? Now I'm moving on, how do I move it? And when do I start taking that benefit out of the program? So unlike the defined benefit programs, when you left at age of 65, you started getting that monthly check period, end of story. You can actually delay taking these payments from these 401(k) lifetime income programs. And how does that fit into when you take Social Security, when you start taking, when you're doing systematic withdrawals from the rest of your plan. So it's a fundamental shift where these decisions that used to be made by the employer now need to be made by the individual. And there isn't an individual out there outside of, that can do it without the assistance of a financial advisor. They need to be an integral part of this process. Lifetime income out of 401(k) plans doesn't work without the active involvement of the financial advisor.
[Travis] Okay. Well thanks for giving me insight into what nerds dream about. I'll just keep my own dreams if that's alright with everyone.
[Bob] So that's the six pack of beer, right?
[Travis] That, yeah. So it's been a few years since the first secure Act pass. When should financial professionals anticipate seeing clients with annuities in their 401(k) plans?
[Bob] Well, I suspect you are seeing it now. I mean, there was a big moment about a year or two ago when the University of California retirement plans adopted QLACs as part of their program. Now, a QLAC is something called a Qualified Longevity Annuity Contract. And it was designed, what a QLAC did is it allowed you to subtract the value of annuity contract purchase through your 401(k) plan from the amounts used to determine what your required minimum distribution would be. Alright. It sounds silly, right? But what had happened when California adopted the QLAC as part of the retirement plan, it made annuities and 401(k) plans available to now millions of participants. And so now they can go do it. And so, but now we've also seen companies like Allianz and many others have now designed products and they now have been coming to the market in the last couple of years that will provide these living benefit type of lifetime income programs through a 401(k) plan. And so it's happening now, I would be surprised if the advisor isn't seeing a lot of it now. It is starting, I think we've finally hit a tipping point. So if you've not seen it yet, you are actually going to be seeing it soon, or you're going to be getting telephone calls, there's enough marketing going out there, people are talking about it a lot, and the uptake is beginning.
[Travis] Gotcha. So, you mentioned the product and the products are great. I've seen the one for example, that Allianz sells, but selling the product and selling the idea and the concept are a little different, right? So many clients have never considered an annuity before seeing it as a part of a 401(k) plan. How should a financial professional explain the offering?
[Bob] Well, here's the key for the financial professional. You need to get in touch with your client, say if you've got the advisor with, here's your client, right? You can't sell that client the 401(k) annuity. It always has to be bought by the plan. So the plan of the employer is the key. It's a cog here. What you need to do, if you have a client who is actually in a 401(k) plan, who has an annuity offering in it, get in touch with the plan sponsor. That plan participant is entitled to all kinds of information about that annuity offering in that plan. Now, you as an advisor may not like it. You may think that you've got a better product on your hand, and you still may be able to do it if that person can roll their money outta the 401(k) plan into your favorite product. But for the most part, for the person who is employed, they're not gonna be able to roll that money out of that 401(k) plan into the product you think is best for them. You're stuck. You've just got it, typically, they're only buying one product of one design and you have to understand it. So that's the key. Get the name of the HR person that has the summary plan description. Every one of these annuity products that are in 401(k) plans have a lot of corollary materials that explain it. All these employers are trying to get their employees comfortable with it. So you need to go get familiar with it. It's still an annuity which requires a lot of expert knowledge that the financial professional has, but the person who's an employee has no interest in knowing about it. They need you, they need you to figure out how much of their money should they be putting into this annuity program. But in order to do that, you need to find out what it is. I mean, what are the terms? Is it a GLWB or not? Is it a stand-alone or not? Is it part of a managed account or not? And how does that fit into your customer's plan?
[Travis] Right. So you say, hey, it's still an annuity, but how are annuities within 401(k) similar to retail annuities and how are they different?
[Bob] The difference is, actually, there's two differences. One, the only thing you can put into them is money that's in the retirement plan. So that's fundamental, right? But it's purchased based upon a contract between the insurance company and the 401(k) plan and the employer, not with the individual. So there are a whole pile of technical rules that apply differently to an annuity contract that's purchased by a plan then that retail annuity that the advisor would be selling to the individual, if they just had their IRA and they were talking about purchasing an annuity contract to the IRA. Compensation, you're not gonna be able to get compensation off that contract. That's a big deal. Right? You're gonna have to make sure that you work out with your client on how that's folded into your own fees. The pricing is going to be different of a planned purchase annuity than it's gonna be in a retail annuity. For one, the plans often can buy at scale, they can get kind of pricing on this thing. And how pricing is reflected is usually in things like the crediting rates under the contracts, in some other ancillary benefits and enhancements to the benefits. So typically a 401(k) plan will be able to offer to plan participants a level of annuity with kinds of designs and benefits that they could not get individually because scale is not there. I mean, when you're selling an individual annuity contract, there's all sorts of things that make it more expensive than if a plan could buy. So keep that in mind. So that's where you're gonna see a difference in the benefits and the pricing of it, and maybe even the crediting rates. And there's a whole pot, I tell you what I would do warn you against it, let's say if you have a small employer who wants to, they're a customer or a client of yours, you've sold them an annuity. The annuity that you have sold that person individually may not serve well if it's put into that person's 401(k) plan that they sponsor because they own a small company. You really need to be careful about that because you can get your employer or your client in a whole bunch of trouble if you try just putting that same annuity that you sold to them personally into the 401(k) plan because the compliance rules just aren't there. And there's some serious financial penalties if you don't comply with the rules. So you might like the idea and your client who owns a small business might be very comfortable with the idea of your annuity of that product. But you'll need an institutional version of that product to put it in 401(k) plans. Now, there has been for a long time these one or two employer shops, they actually have a retail annuity in their 401(k) plan. Typically, when you're in that very small shop, typically those will work. But if you have any number of employees, then you start getting into trouble. And make sure you go to your insurance company and ask them what is their institutional version of the product that you've sold on the retail side.
[Travis] Gotcha. Now, very good point. And thanks for that warning. So I understand the conversations that a financial professional should be then having with a plan sponsor or that person in HR, but what question should financial professionals ask about the annuity in the employer-sponsored 401(k) plan to help offer a client some guidance?
[Bob] Boy, there's stuff, there's a bunch of stuff they can ask. Get to know the specifics of the actual design and what the guarantees are. Let me use an example of a GLWB. So an advisor's selling an FIA with a GLWB, they know how it works, right? But the advisor needs to help the client understand what happens if the plan terminates, or what happens if the employee terminates. How do they get that guarantee and how can they take that guarantee with them and not lose that guarantee they've been working on for all that time? Understand their investment rights underneath the contract. Every contract, every lifetime income program has a little bit a different design. They need to understand the restrictions on it and any kind of risks that may be for their own, for their client, what risks they have when things change. How firm are the guarantees, again. And they need to know how you transfer the money between that contract that's held in the plan and other investments in the plan. They need to know those details. And then they need to know when the participant leaves that employer, how can they take those guarantees with them? Can it go to an IRA? Can it go to another plan? I roll into another plan. They specifically know, the employees, the participant's gonna rely upon that advisor to find out, "Hey, what happens if I quit jobs? What's gonna happen to my GLWB then?" That advisor, they're gonna look at that advisor and say, "Look, you told me." So they gotta know. They gotta know.
[Travis] Yeah, no, for sure, for sure. No, I'm glad we're having this conversation. Obviously you have a wealth of knowledge on it. So that's obviously a plus. And it sounds like you need to be a financial professional in every sense of the word, if you're going to delve into this and try to explain it. Typically the rule of thumb is that financial professionals would talk about adding an annuity into a client's portfolio about, I don't know, five to 10 years before they retire. What about for these annuities within a 401(k) plan? Like when should clients start allocating funds there?
[Bob] Everybody who sells annuity contracts to these 401(k) plans has their own number. They all say, they typically keep it to an age, his age, it could be age 35, it could be age 45, age 55. It's going to depend upon the actual design. That's one thing about 401(k) lifetime income. It really does require the individual financial advisor to be involved. They need, again, it might be the same answer. Start buying that thing 10 years beforehand. In some of these products in the retail space, what happens is you are buying it, the longer you're in it, the greater of the lifetime income benefit you get on the back end. They have something called the benefit base, right, that they could, that actually grows over time in a way that you couldn't get if you just went out when you retired to buy the annuity with your retirement account. So I don't have an answer to that question. That financial professional does, though. Once he knows what that product is, they should be able to tell you how that fits in with your rest of your financial plan and when you should start allocating your 401(k) account to that annuity. This is where the advisor really will play a key role.
[Travis] Right. No, absolutely. Again, that's what I said, to be a financial professional, truly in every sense of the word. In your work, what have you learned about the effectiveness and best uses for annuities and 401(k) plans, and what are some of the top considerations for financial professionals who wanna work in the best interest of the clients?
[Bob] I think one of the key issues that has to be resolved is the ability to roll over the guarantees. So let's say you are, and I will use a GLWB as a great example. So when you're purchasing a GLWB in a plan, you are actually purchasing some floors, some guarantees, some enhanced benefits. Having the ability to save that and not lose it when you leave the plan, or when the plan leaves you. To me, that is number one. And that's the key is really portability of the benefit. And that's what we're all working on to make these things really more portable. So every product is a little bit different. Every insurance company's products have a little bit different features, upsides and downsides, but when it really comes down to it, no matter how it's designed, you gotta know how you can take the guarantees with you.
[Travis] Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, you mentioned the word portability throughout today's discussion, and I mean that's really key in, if you ever want to hone in on a word that's probably the one 'cause that kind of makes sense for it all to come together. How do you think annuities within 401(k) s will change retirement planning for clients and the professionals who help them?
[Bob] I think it's now going to be, before when you think about how 401(k) account balances have always fit into an individual's financial plan, the most the advisor would do was advise them how to allocate their investments between the investments that are available in the 401(k)k plan, and that's the extent of it. I think what the change will be is now that you're going to be able to purchase, the individual's gonna be able to purchase lifetime income at scale, at good pricing, it is gonna become now a critical portion of the individual's financial plan well beyond the allocation of the assets within the, that are available in the 401(k) plan. So I think the successful advisor and professional will see that it is now critical that they know what the terms and conditions of that lifetime income program being offered under the 401(k) and they'll need to incorporate it into their financial plan more than just kind of an aside, this is how you're gonna allocate. It becomes a critical part of your entire financial plan.
[Travis] Oh for sure.
[Bob] I want, if I can say one more thing about the-
[Travis] Yeah, absolutely.
[Bob] That about the portability.
[Travis] Yeah, please do.
[Bob] Be careful about portability. I've seen a lot of these products that are out there that they're claiming that the guarantees are portable. Make sure you turn, go into the details of what's that mean. Does that mean that they have to sell your annuity that's in the plan and then buy a new one at a different pricing level? And are you guaranteed to actually go and get that new product once you leave? Or what are you losing?
[Travis] Gotcha.
[Bob] There is not a vendor out there right now who isn't saying that their product is portable. Don't take it as face value. Dive into the details on what it takes to actually port that benefit that you've accrued under the plan and take it to wherever you're going, whether it be your IRA or to another plan or things like that. Everybody says portable. You are the professional, you can understand the terms. Go find out what that really means. You'll really be helping your customer that way, your client that way.
[Travis] Absolutely. So last question here. What do you see as the next innovation coming to employer retirement benefits? I mean, are we gonna see a SECURE Act three and turn this thing into a trilogy where the third movie's the worst amongst the bunch, but what do you think is next in terms of innovation?
[Bob] The next innovation is going to be finding a way anyway, we don't see it coming yet. A way to, you're hearing a bunch of stuff like now that you are making the federal thrift plans available as 401(k) plans. You are hearing a bunch of really odds and ends. One of the big issues are 403 , collective investment trusts. I mean, there's a bunch of big issues like that out there. So it really goes to the sound of portability. What I still think there has to be a universality of all this. You have to be able to easily move your lifetime income guarantees from one place to another. And I think that I've seen some people try to actually patent certain processes. A lot of people are thinking about how to do this. And we'll need some legislation for it. But I think really the next big thing, and we're nowhere near seeing it yet, will be some kind of the universal portability to move these things around wherever you go and preserve them, personally.
[Travis] Gotcha. No, that's gonna be huge. Well, I tell you what, for the millions and millions of folks have enjoyed today's conversation, where can they find you online?
[Bob] I maintain a website, a blog site where I've been blogging on lifetime income and all sorts of retirement products for the last 12 or 13 years. It's businessofbenefits.com.
[Travis] So thank you so much for your time, your wisdom, and being here today.
[Bob] Travis, I've enjoyed it. As always, this has been fun.
[Travis] So what we learned from Bob is that you need to understand the offerings and employer-sponsored retirement plans. After all these plans hold a majority of retirement assets. Newer options like annuities within 401(k) plans can help Americans address risk and the new reality of retirement. Thanks for listening to Rebuilding Retirement. I'm Travis Walker. Join us next time.
