California Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program on the RFI for SB 1234

SIFMA provides comments to the California Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program responding to the request for information (RFI) on SB 1234, the California Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program.

California financial services firms – which directly employ 545,000 workers in the state and indirectly employ countless others – currently offer a wide variety of retirement savings alternatives, including 401(K) plans, 403(b) plans, 401(a) plans, 457(b) plans, SIMPLE IRAs, SEP IRAs, and traditional IRAs. Smaller employers and individual employees tend to gravitate to IRAs because they are low-cost, straightforward and easy to administer.

This program would create a new state-run structure that would directly compete for business with a wide range of California financial services firms and retirement plan providers. This would directly affect the livelihoods of securities firms and individual brokers, insurance and life insurance companies and individual agents, plan providers and their employees, and others in the financial services industry.