To say this year's NAPA/ASPPA 401(k) conference kicked off with conflicted feelings would be understating it.
The opening general session March. 3 in Las Vegas opened with fanfare over the NAPA's exploding membership. Barely a year old, the National Association of Plan Advisers—which will be taking over the Summit mantle next year—already boasts more than 4,000 members.
But the regulatory drive behind that membership surge—along with a less-than-cooperative market— might be why the rest of the show's opening act trudged along less optimistically.
Recommended For You
In fact, ASPPA executive director and chief executive officer Brian Graff summed it up pretty grimly, as a pair of bullet points.
"There is a lack of confidence, a lack of satisfaction, with the current system," he said. And, he added, every would-be retiree in the market is after the same Holy Grail: lifetime income.
After running down the never-ending fiscal plot lines from the Hill—debt ceiling, fiscal cliff, sequestration and continuing resolutions—Graff appeared as fed up as the rest of us.
"We [the retirement planning industry] paid for the sequester. We've been the unfortunate piggy bank for [a lot of budgetary wrangling]," he explained.
At the end of the day, though, it comes back to the three-legged approach when it comes to addressing the country $6.6 trillion retirement deficit: Improve Social Security, work on improving 401(k)s and rebuild pension plans, no doubt setting the tone for hte rest of the conference.
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
