Stig nybo bio

Americans are living longer, they spend voraciously, and they rely extensively on debt to finance their spending. In the 12 th Annual Retirement Survey conducted by the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies in , Nybo said, about 20 percent of those polled had built spending and savings habits that would afford them a financially secure retirement.

These people were not characterized by exceptional educational levels or earnings, but rather by giving priority to consistent saving. The lesson, he said, is simply that it is possible for many people to save adequately. And they have the tools to do it, he insists, in the form of defined contribution plans like the k. While it is customary to complain that the k plan is failing the retirement needs of Americans, Nybo said some of the numbers frequently cited to support that argument are misleading.

He added that participants currently are deferring 3 percent of salary into their plans in line with what companies typically match , but that it should be 6 percent. Additionally, he said, auto-escalation is 1 percent per year, but should be 2 percent. In searching for ways to change their behavior, Nybo said he and Alexander were inspired by previous public service campaigns that had successful outcomes.

Among these was an anti-littering campaign launched in that was spearheaded by a television ad featuring a Native American with a tear in his eye as he surveyed scene after scene of littering. Nybo is pushing the financial services industry to launch a public service campaign that will rival the successful anti-littering campaign that started in Download the complete Stable Times Volume 17 Issue 2.

Info for:. Member Login. Nybo: It's good question, Neil. I had just taken over the pension operation at Transamerica. Actually, that was the primarily a k recordkeeper. We took great pride in returning phone calls timely and accurately filing s, all of those kinds of things. But in my view, that was table stakes. You have to do that in order to be a first-class record keeper.

What I wanted to do was put a stake in the ground about what we really stood for and how we could add value to society, to solve a societal problem, which is under-saving. So, talked about a lot of ideas and ultimately came up with this concept of writing a book and then creating speaking points around that to try and spread the message about what we as practitioners, and that's the entire ecosystem, are here for, and that's to drive better savings behavior so people can retire when they want and need to.

Amato: There are a lot of aspects to saving, retirement. One thing I want to focus on is, I guess, you've worked in the past with regulators, legislators, changing how retirement plans have been written. Tell me a little more about that. What have been some of the changes that you and others have been advocating for and have accomplished over the years?

Nybo: The list is long, not that I have any direct responsibility for, but that I've been involved in and seen peripherally. It's everything from automatic enrollment, automatic escalation in plans, stemming the tide on leakage, money flowing out of plans, the whole QDIA realm, which is the Qualified Default Investment Alternative, target-date funds that we now see as commonplace.

They weren't at one point. These things were not common. In fact, when I wrote my first automatic enrollment plan, and this was some time back, we weren't even sure it was fully legal in California — consent and all kinds of things like that that were a concern. This world has come a long way, and we've been involved in many different aspects.

But I would say the common theme is reducing the resistance for writing plans that actually work, that shape behavior, and that draw people in and get them to save more and invest that money effectively so that they can retire ultimately in good shape. Amato: I want to ask you one aspect of automatic enrollment, you touched on that.

In a preview call, you mentioned something about plans having "automatic enrollment in a plan it didn't belong in. Just to me as an outsider, it sounds like a good thing to have auto enrollment. Nybo: No, it's a great thing to have automatic enrollment, but you have to be real about it. Automatic enrollment comes with responsibilities, and the primary responsibility is that suddenly everybody in that company is going to be enrolled in the plan and oftentimes the administration of the company itself is not well prepared to handle automatic enrollment.

The classic example of one of the early automatic enrollment plans was McDonald's. Well, McDonald's -- that's a tough road. In fact, one of my early mistakes was I wrote a plan for a fast-food franchise. I won't even mention the name of the fast-food chain. It was a group that had different locations. They had high turnover. They had low wages.

They had undocumented employees. So, all of the things that make it really difficult to run an automatic enrollment plan, and this audience especially — auditors, accountants — they understand that if you put it in the wrong plan, it can be an absolute disaster. This one was, we got fired, and I got yelled at for doing it. That's just one example of plans that are just simply not well-suited.

Stig nybo bio

Our perspective at SRP is that you really have to come in eyes wide open, look at the plan, [ask] "does it suit? You come in at something that's meaningful to an employee. When you do it, you do it with gusto, but you've got to be able to recognize when it simply does not fit the employer or the employee workforce, and both are real. Amato: Your message is about more than auto enrollment in plans, retirement plans, auditing such plans.

You want to talk some, I think, about being purposeful in work, and maybe part of your message is about thinking about a role as more than just a way to collect a paycheck. What do you have to say about that? Nybo: Yeah for me, I work a lot. And people laugh at me because I spend a lot of time working, and whether it's multiple ventures, if you will, but I do work a lot, and I'm very purposeful about my work.

I get a lot of enjoyment out of my work. To me, I think it's Mark Twain who said that "love your work, and you'll never work a day in your life. By the way, back to your previous question about what you're trying to accomplish by writing the book — doing good for humanity, doing well by doing good. That's a phrase that is really stuck with me.

And so I think, whether you're an auditor, whether you're a retirement practitioner on the advisory side or in everything in between, knowing where you fit into the overall ecosystem and how you can help humanity and how you can be purposeful about what you're doing, it makes life a lot more fun. My perspective is, and what I've told my kids is, find something you like doing, or find something that's interesting and learn to like it, learn to love it.

Learn what your niche is and then share that message and you'll have a lot more fun. Amato: What do you say to someone who says, I don't really do passion work or I don't have a job that makes me passionate? Nybo: I say, bummer. The job doesn't have to — it's very narrow. My view is that I get it from work, I always have, but not everybody has to.

I would just say, you've got to be passionate about something. Passion is important. I did some work with the Stanford Center on Longevity, and one of the things that they honed in on for people that retired, what makes them happy is purpose. Purpose, in my view, purpose and passion, are hand in hand. It's one of the fundamental things that makes life worth living, and it's wonderful when you get it in your work.

I can see from what you do, I can tell that you have passion around what you do, Neil, and it's wonderful. Amato: Well, first, thank you for saying that. That's really nice. We're proud of what the podcast has done over the years. For your book, I was interested in this part, in particular. What did you get out of talking to him about the whole notion of k s and retirement plans in general?

Nybo: I would say it was a little bit mixed from Ted. First of all, I'll maybe take a step back and say, it was an amazing opportunity because part of what we did to try and make it meaningful and give the book some lift was to go out to the industry to people that were very influential, whether they were regulators, whether they [are] entrepreneurs, or practitioners.

We went across the board and talked to people that we thought would have something to say. Ted was big among that group. We talked to Mark Iwry, who ran retirement policy at Treasury. Mark is one of my favorite people. We talked to Jay Vivian, who ran the IBM retirement plan, which was one of the instigators for really good retirement plans.