The members of four national retirement organizations have been gathered under a single umbrella: the American Retirement Association.
While each of the individual organizations will continue to exist under its own name, the National Association of Plan Advisors (NAPA), American Society of Pension Professionals and Actuaries (ASPPA), the ASPPA College of Pension Actuaries (ACOPA), and the National Tax-deferred Savings Association (NTSA) are now under the aegis of the ARA.
According to the group, the ARA will act as “coordinator, overall industry advocate and provider of services like advocacy, media relations, conference support, communications, membership services, etc.”
“Our membership base has expanded dramatically over the past several years,” Brian Graff, executive director and CEO, said in a statement. “This new name and structure allows us to better acknowledge and represent the distinct perspectives of an expanding array of retirement plan professionals in a dynamic and complex legislative and regulatory environment.”
All of the groups will be rebranded under the new ARA nest egg logo. A nest egg “has long been how Americans think about preparing for retirement,” Nevin Adams, chief of marketing and communications at ARA, said in the statement. “Our new brand incorporates the image of that retirement nest egg as well as a protective shield representing our members’ work in protecting and preserving that nest egg.”
Branding aside, each individual organization will continue to have its own membership standards and classifications, its own governance structure and deal primarily with the issues that are its own members’ particular focus.
The ARA, the group noted, will have “two major goals: to educate all retirement plan and benefits professionals, and to create a framework of policy that gives every working American the ability to have a comfortable retirement.”
Altogether the membership of the ARA numbers more than 20,000, it said, and “include(s) every type of retirement plan professional — from business owners, actuaries, consultants and administrators, to insurance professionals, financial advisors, accountants, attorneys and human resource managers. Its members also work with retirement plans of all types, from traditional defined benefit pension plans to 401(k)s, 403(b)s, and 457 plans.”
The new organization also has a new website, www.usaretirement.org.
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