PSNC 2023: EBSA Head Lisa Gomez Talks DOL’s Priorities

Assistant Secretary of Labor Lisa Gomez. Photograph by Matt Kalinowski

Assistant Secretary of Labor Lisa Gomez, the head of the Employee Benefit Security Administration, discussed the department’s top priorities in helping more Americans prepare for retirement at the PLANSPONSOR National Conference in Orlando, Florida on Thursday.

At the top of the priority list, Gomez said the DOL is focused on retirement equity.

“The majority of people do not have access to retirement savings and an opportunity to save for retirement through their employment,” Gomez said. “This is really scary, particularly for underserved communities, for women, for caregivers.”

She said the department is also working on ways to provide education and compliance assistance so that plan sponsors—who are looking to offer these types of benefits and are not sure how to do that—can get help.

In order to expand more access to retirement savings, Gomez said one of her goals is to increase awareness around EBSA itself.

“I think that for both participants and the plan sponsor, service provider community, it’s important to get EBSA’s name out there,” Gomez said. “We have benefit advisers in each of our regional offices that are literally just a phone call away to help not only participants but also plan sponsors that might be needing assistance and don’t know where to turn.”

With the passage of the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022, Gomez said there are provisions that require the DOL to conduct studies that look into various reporting and disclosure requirements, and the DOL is focusing on ways to get feedback from the retirement community.

Another current focus of the DOL is finding missing participants and reuniting them with their benefits. SECURE 2.0 mandates that the DOL creates a national, online “lost and found” database for Americans to track their retirement accounts. Gomez said the DOL is working on how it can most effectively collect information to populate the database.

Gomez adds that the DOL is working on related items, such as auto-portability guidance and guidance on emergency savings accounts.

Under the umbrella of SECURE 2.0, the DOL is reviewing guidance on selection of annuity providers, as well as putting out formal guidance on valuation of employer stock ownership plans. As Congress requires that the DOL issue a report by the end of 2023, Gomez says to expect annuity provider guidance in the forthcoming months.

The conflict of interest rule is also something that is top of mind for EBSA, she says , and the DOL’s most recent regulatory agenda announced that the Department is working on releasing proposed rulemaking sometime this year.

Gomez said the final rules regarding transaction exemption procedures and qualified asset managers are in the works, and the department hopes respectively to release that and put it on the regulatory agenda soon.

An ongoing action item is working on cybersecurity and increased protection for retirement plans.

“It seems like not a day goes by where we’re hearing about a different breach… but it’s a continuing struggle,” Gomez said.

ESG continues to be an issue that remains “in flux,” according to Gomez. The DOL’s final rule on prudence and loyalty in plan investments at the end of 2022 was met with both support and opposition, as 25 states filed a lawsuit to stop the rule in January.

Gomez said the DOL is continuing to “support plan sponsors and fiduciaries that are interested in having [ESG as an] option” and at the same time letting it “work its way through the courts.”

In terms of promoting diversity, equity and inclusion, Gomez said she is working on a retirement equity group in collaboration with the Social Security Administration and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to “make meaningful changes” and better serve communities that may not have access to retirement savings.

Gomez compared her work to a “game of regulatory Jenga”—trying to figure out which items fit or make sense to prioritize at certain times and which need to be pushed to the side a bit before other regulations are rolled out.

“I’m looking forward to continuing to work with [plan sponsors] and seeing the great things that [are] to come in the retirement industry in the coming weeks, months and years,” Gomez said.