The 2015 Pension 40: Phyllis Borzi

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Phyllis Borzi
Assistant Secretary
for Employee Benefits Security / U.S. Department
of Labor
Last year: 15

It’s been a long and challenging year for Phyllis Borzi, 68, who has been on the front line of an increasingly fraught retirement security battle among the financial services industry, Congress and consumer advocates. As her six-year tenure at the U.S. Department of Labor winds down, the assistant secretary for employee benefits security is under pressure to expand and increase retirement plan coverage and adequacy. One important goal: helping states create public-private partnership retirement plans for previously uncovered private workers; this includes forming multiple-employer plans that abide by ERISA and allow states to be service providers. If a state wants to take a non-ERISA approach with individual retirement accounts, Borzi says, “it needs to think about how to include a mechanism to ensure that contributions taken from people’s paychecks eventually get into the individual’s plan.” On November 16, Borzi’s team issued a proposed regulation and an interpretive bulletin to address those goals. Another longtime, and much-delayed, DoL policy goal that now looks like it may be finalized in early 2016 is a fiduciary rule covering broker-dealers and insurance companies, which, despite calling themselves advisers, have long been held to a lesser standard of client care than registered investment advisers. With a JD degree from Catholic University of America, Borzi has spent her career in and out of public service, including 16 years as counsel for the House of Representatives subcommittee on education and labor.

The 2015 Pension 40