Options to Encourage the Preservation of Pension and Retirement Savings: Phase 2

U.S. General Accounting Office

 
The Congress has asked the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO), an independent agency that gathers information for the Congress, to conduct a review of options that could encourage retiring workers to preserve their pension and retirement savings.

In phase 1, we asked you to provide information on:

--factors that affect pension and retirement savings plan benefit payout options offered to and elected by retiring participants,

--options that could be considered to encourage more annuitization of pension and retirement plan savings and the likely effects and tradeoffs of these options, and

-- the role of information and education in managing pension and retirement plan savings during retirement.

This questionnaire is the second in a 3-phase, iterative process to enable us to gather information and expert opinion on the range of answers provided to phase 1. This questionnaire will be used to synthesize expert opinion on policy options that are available for increasing annuities offered to and elected by participants, and is not intended to provide a basis for recommendations to policy makers about specific legislative proposals.

The questions in this Phase 2 questionnaire are based on the responses of the 24 experts who provided input to Phase 1.