View or download a PDF of the letter here.
Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund submitted a letter opposing the Department of Labor’s proposal to open 401(k)s and other defined contribution retirement plans to private equity, private credit, crypto, and other high-cost, opaque, and risky assets. The comment letter included a new white paper explaining how private equity is fundamentally incompatible with longstanding retirement savings protections guaranteed under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, and a new analysis of plan-level data showing that defined contribution plans with virtually no exposure to alternative assets have outperformed defined benefit plans with significant alternative asset exposure—undercutting the conventional wisdom claim that workers need private market investments to earn higher returns.