‘Mission’ Statement

In a year in which uncertainty and confusion reigned supreme, almost overnight our industry packed up and went home one night and opened up for business the next day from… what seemed a zillion different locations. 

Most doubtless did so anticipating a short disruption—a couple of weeks, a month at the most. Who could have imagined then what the months ahead would bring?

Now, we weren’t fighting the same kind of battles that many did—the front-line health care workers who showed up for work every day, ill-equipped, and confronted with the deadly and debilitating effects of a pandemic, those whose efforts were essential to keep utilities running, to stock grocery store shelves, the delivery personnel whose efforts made it possible for the rest of us to stay “in,” nor were we the ones scrambling to find a vaccine that would save lives and help get things back to “normal”—but there were “battles” all the same. 

Ours were battles to keep phone (and video) lines open, to process payrolls, to produce statements, and yes—to prepare distributions (not to mention discrimination tests and 5500 filings). These certainly weren’t life-or-death battles for most of “us”– but may well have been for those on whose behalf those acts were undertaken. There were also, of course, “battles” along the way—to pursue the financial relief needed for millions, and that included the negotiations that found their way into the CARES Act, and the subsequent regulatory guidelines and clarity that made it all “work”… the processes and systems that had to be modified to accommodate those, the communications necessary to explain not only what that relief entailed, but how it was all going to work… work that continued through to the very last week of the year with partial plan termination relief (finally) contained in the COVID relief bill. 

Throughout there were surely disruptions and interruptions—connections lost, misinformation or miscommunications—yet, to the extent those occurred, they appear to have been outliers and rarities.

At the same time, there was encouraging news in findings that many, perhaps most, retirement plan participants and plan sponsors were able to “make do” without dipping into retirement savings or cutting back on employer contributions. Not all, of course; some industries, and some participants, were forced to fall back on or suspend those commitments. Still, there was comfort to be found in knowing that for most those preparations would hold true for another rainy day, if not retirement itself. More comfort still in seeing the strength of those commitments—record levels of savings—in the months leading up to the pandemic’s onslaught.   

We’re not yet at the end of this, of course. Millions continue to struggle, financially, and physically—the strains of loss, the burdens (and joys) of juggling home and work at home, the separation from loved ones, clients and co-workers. Those retirement savings “cushions” may yet be (further) eroded, the partial plan termination relief of insufficient length to outlast COVID’s economic travails.  

But when we do get to the end of this—and there will be an end—there will be plenty of opportunity to reconsider how we’ve spent the past year—the things we’ve done, the lessons learned, the things we might have done differently, and perhaps “better” if we’d only known then what we know now. 

It is, of course, too soon to consider it “mission accomplished”—the tasks before us never really are—but, writ large, it seems to me that in 2020 our collective “mission”—to help strengthen and secure America’s retirement future—was, full of “accomplishments,” big and small, that made a difference.

And that’s a “mission” statement in which we all can—and should—take pride.