Kaleda has an extensive background
in employee benefits and financial services. His experience includes handling
fiduciary matters for a variety of clients including plan sponsors, investment
and other fiduciary committees, investment managers/advisers and service
providers. He also has experience representing clients before the Department of
Labor (DOL) and Internal Revenue Service.
Before joining Groom Law Group,
Kaleda was a partner at Alston & Bird LLP and a compliance consultant and
attorney at The Vanguard Group Inc.
He is a member of the DOL’s Employee
Retirement Income Security Act’s (ERISA) Advisory Council.
“David’s expertise will further our
ability to provide state-of-the-art advice and advocacy for our plan sponsor
and service provider clients,” said, John McGuiness, the firm’s executive
principal
Attorneys in Groom’s fiduciary responsibility division
advise Fortune 500 plan sponsors and service providers including insurance
companies, broker dealers, banks, mutual fund companies and recordkeepers. More
information is at www.groom.com.
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An Investment Company Institute
(ICI) survey shows that one factor behind the strong attitudes of U.S.
households favoring the preservation of retirement savings incentives is the
fact that households—whether or not they had a defined contribution (DC) plan
account—were generally confident in these plans’ ability to help individuals
meet their retirement goals.
The study, “America’s Commitment to
Retirement Security: Investor Attitudes and Actions, 2013,” by the ICI, found a
majority (85%) of the 4,000 households surveyed from November 2012 through
January 2013 disagreed with a suggestion to remove the tax incentives for DC
plan retirement savings. Opposition to elimination of the tax advantages was
the strongest among households with defined contribution accounts (89%), but
even 81% of the households without these accounts opposed eliminating the tax
incentives.
In addition, about 80% of surveyed
households agreed that retirement savings incentives should continue to be a
national priority.
A vast majority of households
invested in defined contribution plans (about nine in 10) say these plans help
them to think about the long term and make it easier to save for retirement.
More than three-fifths (63%) of U.S. households have favorable impressions of
the 401(k) and similar plan accounts. Most households’ impressions were shaped
by the ability of these accounts to accumulate significant savings, the
performance of retirement plan account investments and personal experience with
such plans.
Responses to the ICI survey further
indicated that respondents appreciate the key investment features of DC plans.
Eighty-four percent indicated that their defined contribution plan offered a
good lineup of investment options. In addition, 96% indicated it is important
to have choice in and control of the investments in their retirement plan
accounts.
(Cont’d…)
In addition to the annual household
survey of attitudes towards retirement savings, the ICI study includes data
from plan recordkeepers about contributions, asset allocation, and withdrawal
and loan activity in more than 24 million employer-sponsored DC plan
participant accounts in the first nine months of 2012.
The recordkeeper data show continued
commitment from plan participants to retirement saving: Only 2.1% of defined
contribution plan participants stopped making contributions during the first
three quarters of 2012. At the end of September 2012, 18.3% of participants had
loans outstanding, compared with 18.5% of participants at year-end
2011.
Defined contribution plan
participants tended to stay the course with their asset allocations. Nine
percent of participants changed the asset allocation of their account balances
during the first three quarters of 2012. In addition, 6.5% of participants
changed the asset allocation of their contributions between January 2012 and
September 2012, down from 8.4% during the first three quarters of 2011.
Only 2.8% of plan participants took
withdrawals from their participant-directed retirement plans, with 1.4% taking
hardship withdrawals. These withdrawal rates are in line with the recordkeeper
results for the first three quarters of 2009, 2010 and 2011.