To help foster financial well-being for all, but especially lower-income and minority households, the U.S. Department of the Treasury released a report commissioned by Congress that recommends federal implementation of the SECURE 2.0 Act as a means to increase retirement security.
Among its recommendations, the Treasury pointed to the Saver’s Match program, a provision within SECURE 2.0 that would provide qualifying lower-income workers a federal government match of up to $1,000 in a workplace plan or an individual retirement account.
- The report says employers have a “significant ability to impact their employees’ current and future financial resilience and well-being, including through their insurance, retirement, and other benefit options.”
- Treasury recommends that employers evaluate their suite of benefits to identify opportunities to improve their employees’ ability to build emergency and retirement savings.
- This includes evaluating retirement plans to identify whether they can design vesting and employer contribution policies to be more inclusive.
- For example, employers could raise the level of non-matching employer contributions that are made regardless of employees’ ability to contribute or use dollar caps for employer matches.
