51şÚÁĎÍř’s Retirement Income Solutions team recently convened senior retirement income leaders from the nation’s top defined contribution recordkeepers for our 4th Annual Retirement Income Recordkeeper Roundtable. What began as an effort to create a dedicated forum for recordkeepers has evolved alongside the industry, bringing together recordkeeping organizations at various stages of their retirement income journey to exchange real-world insights, challenges and strategies to improve participant outcomes.
Since its inception, the roundtable has maintained a singular mission: to help advance the defined contribution industry toward retirement income as the core outcome for plan participants. Participation has grown steadily over the past three years, with this year’s session bringing together 16 leaders representing 14 recordkeeping organizations, reflecting both the momentum and the importance of this conversation across the industry.
Unlike traditional industry events, the roundtable is intentionally structured as a recordkeeper-only forum, fostering a trusted, confidential environment for candid dialogue, peer learning and collaborative problem-solving. Participants consistently emphasize how rare and valuable this type of open, practitioner-focused exchange is in today’s market, reinforcing the roundtable’s role as a catalyst for industry alignment and progress.
Against this backdrop, the conversation surfaced four key priorities for advancing retirement income:
- Participant Adoption and Benefits Utilization
The group explored what it takes to move participants from passive enrollment to active, informed use of retirement income solutions. While many programs are implemented with strong intent, adoption and meaningful engagement often fall short. The discussion pushed beyond “how do we get people in” to “how do we ensure participation actually benefits them,” highlighting the need to rethink plan design, elevate communication strategies and raise the bar for what defines successful implementation.
A central theme was the role of defaults. While data shows that utilization in defined contribution plans remains low without them, defaulting participants can create a false sense of success if the underlying design doesn’t fully support their needs. The group emphasized the importance of closing the gap between enrollment and true optimization, ensuring participants are not just passively included but are positioned to fully realize the intended benefits. Simply checking the box is not enough.
- Advisor Education
Continued education for advisors and consultants is essential to ensure that retirement income solutions are evaluated and implemented with participants’ best interests in mind. The retirement plan advisor community is large and diverse, requiring tailored, ongoing education and support, not a one-time effort. Roundtable participants noted that a minority of advisors are already well ahead of the curve, actively pulling their plan clients toward better solutions. The challenge is expanding that group. Consistent, ongoing education can help broaden it, ultimately leading to more advisors who actively advocate for participant outcomes.
- Proof Points for Retirement Income Success
As retirement income programs mature, the focus is shifting to demonstrating measurable impact. Session participants discussed how solutions are sometimes celebrated simply for being added to a platform or adopted by a plan sponsor, but the group agreed that's just step one. The real measure of success is whether participants are achieving better retirement outcomes. To get there, the industry needs to align on benchmarks that define and measure participant outcomes at both the individual firm and industry levels. Sharing success stories, the associated proof points and lessons allows the rest of the industry to replicate what works and accelerate adoption.
- It Takes the Whole Ecosystem
Retirement income doesn’t succeed or fail because of any single player. It succeeds or fails because of how well entities in the ecosystem work together. Recordkeepers, middleware providers, advisors, consultants, plan sponsors and participants all have a role. Without clear ownership and defined handoffs, even well-designed programs can break down. The group underscored that collaboration isn’t a nice-to-have outcome; it’s a structural requirement. When each stakeholder understands not just their own role but how it connects to everyone else’s, retirement income programs are far more likely to deliver on their promise.
This year’s roundtable highlights the growing momentum behind retirement income and the increasing expectations that come with it. The conversation has shifted from implementation to impact, from access to outcomes. Progress will depend on the industry's willingness to keep learning from one another, challenge assumptions and refine what works. That kind of ongoing exchange is exactly what forums like 51şÚÁĎÍř’s Recordkeeper Roundtable are designed to enable.
To learn more about the shift toward retirement income and the trends impacting adoption, watch the webinar, Retirement Income in DC Plans: Trends, Challenges and Solutions.