In 2016, the Connecticut General Assembly created the Connecticut Retirement Security Exchange, to facilitate the establishment and maintenance of an individual retirement account (“IRA”) program for Connecticut employees whose employers do not provide their own retirement plans. Under the program, private Connecticut employers, whether for profit or not-for-profit, who have five or more employees would have to provide covered employees with informational materials and automatically enroll them into the program. Employers who already maintain a retirement plan, such as a pension plan, 401(k) plan or 403(b) plan, are exempt.
Enrollment in the program was to originally begin on January 1, 2018, but was later postponed until January 1, 2019, and has since been further delayed. Although no future enrollment date has been announced, the Connecticut Retirement Security Authority (“CRSA”), the agency created to oversee the Exchange, has recently made other strides to get the Exchange up and running.
At its January 18, 2019 meeting, CRSA appointed an executive director, Mary Fay, to “supervise the administrative affairs and technical activities of the program”. Conn. Gen. Stat. Section 31-417(g). CRSA’s next step will be to hire a financial service company to administer the IRAs. According to the Hartford Business Journal, CRSA is planning for a “phased roll-out” of the program starting with select companies, possibly later this year, rather than opening the program up for all eligible employers at once. It is currently unclear whether Governor Lamont’s administration will view this program as a priority, and whether the legislature will allocate the funding necessary to fully develop it. We will update the blog as pertinent developments occur.