The typical American worker has $955 saved for retirement. Wall Street's biggest private asset firms want a piece of even that.
On Monday, the Labor Department laid out a framework that would make it much simpler for 401(k) plan managers to put their clients' money into private equity, private credit, real estate, and crypto. The proposal creates a legal shield - called a "safe harbor" - for the people who run retirement plans, as long as they check six boxes before adding these investments: performance, fees, how easy it is to pull your money out, how the asset is priced, what it's measured against, and how complicated it is.
This didn't come out of nowhere. President Trump signed an executive order last August called "Democratizing Access to Alternative Assets for 401(k) Investors." That order told federal agencies to open the door for regular people to invest in the same assets that pension funds and ultra-wealthy investors have used for years.
Until now, almost no 401(k) plans actually offered these options - even though they weren't technically banned. The Biden administration had warned plan managers in 2022 about the dangers of putting crypto in retirement accounts, pointing to wild price swings and the chance of fraud.
The new rule flips that tone entirely. Deputy Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling said the proposal doesn't pick winners or losers among investment types. The department wants plan managers to follow a careful process - not avoid certain assets altogether.
The firms that manage private assets have been lobbying hard for this moment. There's roughly $14.2 trillion sitting in tax-advantaged retirement accounts across the country - almost 30% of all retirement money in America.
BlackRock is already building target-date funds - the autopilot retirement portfolios that shift to safer investments as you age - that would include private equity and private credit. State Street teamed up with Apollo to create a similar product mixing index funds with a bucket of private assets.
That's where most investors will likely encounter these new options - not as standalone picks, but folded into the target-date funds that millions of workers are already using.
Not everyone thinks this is a good idea.
Senator Elizabeth Warren called the timing terrible, noting that private equity returns have dropped to their lowest point in 16 years and cracks are forming in the private credit market. She argued the rule is designed to give Wall Street firms access to another pool of money - not to help workers.
Dennis Kelleher, who runs the advocacy group Better Markets, went further. He said the legal protection built into the rule would push financial advisors toward selling these products, calling them potential time bombs sitting inside tens of millions of retirement accounts.
And Alicia Munnell, a retirement researcher at Boston College, said the only group asking for private equity in 401(k)s is the private equity industry itself. Her research on state and local pension plans found that adding private equity didn't boost returns or cut risk.
Comments on the proposal are due 60 days after it hits the Federal Register, and the department wants a final version done by year-end. The big question isn't whether these assets end up in 401(k)s - that feels close to a sure thing now.
It's whether the workers who barely have $1,000 saved will end up paying higher fees on money they can't afford to lose.
