On October 24, J. Mark Iwry reached an important milestone in his five years at the U.S. Treasury. That was the day the agency, along with the Internal Revenue Service, issued guidance that a 401(k) retirement savings plan can offer income annuities in target date funds as a qualified default option. “We’re trying to get the DB into the DC — DB-ify our 401(k) system,” says Iwry, a pioneer in incorporating automatic enrollment in savings plans. Securing retirement income for the American workforce has been a guiding theme for Iwry, 64, a graduate of Harvard College, Harvard Law School and Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. His career includes stints in government — at Treasury in the Clinton and Obama administrations — and in academia, at Georgetown University. In July he had issued guidance approving qualified longevity annuities for company-sponsored plans and individual retirement accounts. “This is the first time the $13 trillion market for 401(k)s and IRAs has been open to this kind of product,” he says. “We wanted to make it an option many Americans, including middle-income folks, could have access to.” Iwry has shaped regulations to allow sponsors to offer cash balance plans and more easily accept rollovers. He is looking forward to the year-end rollout of myRA (My Retirement Account), which he proposed and helped design, a simplified Roth IRA without fees that is invested in savings bonds for workers lacking access to retirement plans at their jobs. It’s a starter plan to turn nonsavers into new savers, Iwry says.
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J. Mark Iwry
Senior Adviser to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary
U.S. Treasury Department
Last year: 27
The 2014 Pension 40