BlackRock Launches In-Plan Lifetime Income Program
The asset manager is now offering Brighthouse and Equitable annuitization options through three big retirement plans.
BlackRock on Wednesday began making its new LifePath Paycheck lifetime income option available through participating employers’ defined contribution retirement plans.
The program is offering annuitization options from Brighthouse Financial and Equitable through 401(k) plans and other retirement plans sponsored by three organizations — Adventist HealthCare Retirement Plans, Avangrid and Tennessee Valley Authority Retirement System — and 11 other sponsors have implementation in progress.
What it means: Eventually, many employed clients may come to their retirement planners with access to annuitization options already available through their employer-sponsored retirement plans.
The legislation: Life insurers’ and asset managers’ belief that retirees will need 401(k) plan lifetime income options was one of the major drivers behind the lobbying that led to the birth of the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019, or the Secure Act, and the Secure 2.0 Act of 2022.
The thinking: BlackRock is one of the biggest asset managers in the world, with $10.5 trillion in assets under management.
Larry Fink, BlackRock’s chairman, sees providing a built-in lifetime income spigot for defined contribution retirement account assets as a huge opportunity.
“We believe LifePath Paycheck will one day be the default retirement investment strategy,” he said as the company opened the program for business.
The history: BlackRock filed a trademark application for the LifePath Paycheck program name in 2018, and it announced the effort to create the program in 2020.
It announced in 2021 that it signed up five employers with 120,000 401(k) plan participants. The number of participants who actually have access to the program now or who are on track to have access soon is about 500,000, according to BlackRock.
Credit: Bloomberg