People will say that I often have a negative spin, regarding the retirement plan industry. I don’t. know if that’s necessarily true, I just think that my views are just unfiltered.
I will say that based on this COVID pandemic and the resiliency of the retirement plan industry, I will say that to steal a line from Winston Churchill, this was our finest hour. With so many employees working from home and so many plan sponsors either in financial distress or seeking CARES distributions for their participants. Regardless of the issues, I believe that the industry as a whole, stood up to a challenge no one could foresee. 20 years earlier, with so few able to access computers from home, the industry probably would have failed to the challenge.
Thankfully, technology and the industry pulled us through. We are not out of the woods yet, but we did avoid what could have been a huge blow to the viability of this industry.