At the forefront of 2025, the retirement planning landscape is evolving rapidly, offering both challenges and unprecedented opportunities for advisors and plan sponsors alike.
Building off his 2024 retirement outlook, Dullaghan is looking at the following for 2025:
Revolutionizing plan design: Crafting participant-centric strategies and leveraging third-party administrators for holistic engagement.
Maximizing 401(k) opportunities: Aligning target-date funds with plan objectives and unlocking wealth potential through retirement plan integration.
Navigating legislation: Turning regulatory updates into tangible growth opportunities for advisors and business owners.
Driving innovation in retirement income solutions: Meeting a universal need with impactful, personalized strategies.
We talked to Dullaghan about actionable strategies that advisors and plan sponsors can put to work in helping Americans save for retirement.
Q: What are some actionable strategies that empower retirement advisors to refine their approach and drive success?
Michael Dullaghan: Defining one's target market and developing a service policy statement are steps that can help retirement advisors in the prospecting or client service phases. Sometimes advisors take on every plan they can and end up with a book of clients that have little in common, which can make the book harder to service. Likewise, if service expectations are not well defined, the retirement advisor may find themselves in the opposite of a desired "under promise, over deliver" state.Recommended For You
Q: What should plan sponsors know about in-plan retirement income solutions in 2025?
MD: Demand for in-plan retirement income is strong as defined benefit plans continue to be phased out. As seen in the National Association of Plan Advisors Retirement Income Certificate—RI(k)—program Retirement Income for 401(k) Plans there is awareness due diligence on in-plan income solutions may be time consuming and require many meetings between plans and their advisors. As we wrote in What retirement plan advisors need to know about in-plan retirement income solutions | Franklin Templeton an "all of the above" approach may make sense when assessing retirement income options. In other words, rather than getting bogged down analyzing guaranteed and non-guaranteed solutions, why not include both.Related: ‘Help U.S. Retire’: Industry trade group launches grassroots campaign to put Congress on alert
Q: What legislative and regulatory changes should retirement industry experts watch for in 2025?
MD: This is a complex question. The expiration of the Tax Cut and Jobs Acts (TCJA) of 2017 may overshadow reg/leg changes in the retirement industry. Industry associations are watching closely to see if retirement plans may be used as a "pay for" for other priorities. Until issues with the TCJA expiration are resolved, it seems unlikely we will see significant retirement plan legislation this year. In the meantime, some provisions of the SECURE 2.0 legislation passed in 2022 become effective in 2025. This includes auto-enrollment and other provisions.NOT FOR REPRINT
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Lynn Cavanaugh
Lynn Varacalli Cavanaugh is Senior Editor, Retirement at BenefitsPRO. Prior, she was editor-in-chief of the What's New in Benefits & Compensation newsletter. She has worked for major firms in the employee benefits space, Vanguard and Willis Towers Watson, as well as top media companies, including Condé Nast and American Media.
