< The 2014 Pension 40: The Battle Is On
13
J. Mark Iwry
Senior Adviser to the Secretary and Deputy Assistant Secretary
U.S. Treasury Department
Last year: 27
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.
The 2014 Pension 40
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
| Bruce Rauner Illinois | John and Laura Arnold Laura and John Arnold Foundation | Randi Weingarten American Federation of Teachers | Rahm Emanuel Chicago | David Boies Boies, Schiller & Flexner |
| 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| Randy DeFrehn National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans | Damon Silvers AFL-CIO | Laurence Fink BlackRock | Chris Christie New Jersey | Robin Diamonte United Technologies Corp. |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| Ted Eliopoulos California Public Employees’ Retirement System | John Kline Minnesota | J. Mark Iwry U.S. Treasury Department | Gina Raimondo Rhode Island | Phyllis Borzi U.S. Labor Department |
| 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
| Orrin Hatch Utah | Abigail Johnson Fidelity Investments | Ted Wheeler Oregon | Caitlin Long Morgan Stanley | James Hoffa International Brotherhood of Teamsters |
| 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| Amy Kessler Prudential Financial | Alejandro García Padilla Puerto Rico | Christopher Klein U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Caifornia | Steven Rhodes Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan | Kevin de León California |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| David Draine Pew Charitable Trusts | Jordan Marks National Public Pension Coalition | Sam Liccardo California | Joshua Rauh Stanford Graduate School of Business | Karen Ferguson and Karen Friedman Pension Rights Center |
| 31 | 32 | 33 | 34 | 35 |
| Timothy Blake Moody’s Investors Service | Kathleen Kennedy Townsend Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University | Edward (Ted) Siedle Benchmark Financial Services | Daniel Loeb Third Point | Judy Mares Employee Benefits Security Administration, U.S. Labor Department |
| 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 |
| Andrew Biggs American Enterprise Institute | Andy Stern Columbia University | Kenneth Mehlman KKR & Co. | Teresa Ghilarducci New School for Social Research | A. Melissa Moye U.S. Treasury Department |
