The retirement savings gap can only be improved by addressing the gaps in access, saving and guaranteed income, said Thasunda Brown Duckett, president and CEO of TIAA, in her closing keynote at the 2024 Influential Women in Institutional Investing Conference in Chicago.
Duckett said the problems we are trying to solve include the fact that every day 11,000 Americans are reaching their retirement age and yet there’s a $4 trillion retirement savings gap.
“First, we have an access gap,” said Duckett. “Fifty-seven million Americans do not have access to a workplace plan and disproportionately that will be women and people of color.”
“Secondly, we know there is a savings gap,” she said. “People are not saving enough in accumulation. One of things we can do is continue to ensure that workplace plans offer auto enrollment and auto escalation.”
“Lastly, there’s a guarantee gap in this county,” she said. People are living longer, creating more longevity risk, and Social Security is under pressure. Duckett also mentioned that the last time the U.S. had the level of inflation it has had the past several years, it was the 1970s and at that time, 70% of Americans had access to a pension plan, while today that has plummeted to 12%.
Addressing the gaps will take public and private partnership, she said.
“When it comes to a secure retirement, it’s been one where we as an industry, we have been able to make strides in a bipartisan way,” said Duckett. “Everyone understands the burden and the stress of not being prepared, and many of us are feeling squeezed.
“One of the things we talk about at TIAA to frame this narrative is a Retirement Bill of Rights, and really quite simply what we say is that every American deserved the dignity of having a secure retirement.”
Early in her keynote, Duckett addressed the challenges of being a woman of color in the institutional investing industry.
“When I think about the struggle, when I think about the perseverance, when I think about grit, when I think about all that I am, I can’t help but think about it through the prism of the strength of women, the prism of the strength of Black women and the prism of families doing their best,” she said.
“For me as a leader, I always understand who’s not in the room,” she said. “I always ask what do you have to say at any meeting. If you’re on a box, on a Zoom, I have to hear your voice. It comes from a place of understanding what it feels like to be the ‘only.’”
