43:23-2 Findings, declarations relative to a New Jersey Small Business Retirement Marketplace.

2. The Legislature finds and declares that:

a. it is appropriate to create a New Jersey Small Business Retirement Marketplace because there is a retirement savings gap in this State, one in six Americans retire in poverty, and employees who are unable to effectively build their retirement savings risk living on low incomes in their elderly years and are more likely to become dependent on State services;

b. small businesses, which employ half of New Jersey's private workforce, often choose not to offer retirement plans to employees due to concerns about the cost, administrative burden, and potential liability that they believe would be placed on their businesses;

c. the federal government has attempted to address the savings gap by establishing the myRA program, a safe, affordable, and accessible retirement vehicle designed to remove barriers to retirement savings;

d. the New Jersey Small Business Retirement Marketplace will remove the barriers to entry into the retirement market for small businesses by educating small employers on plan availability and promoting, without mandating participation, qualified, low cost, low burden retirement savings vehicles and myRA; the marketplace furthers greater retirement plan access for the residents of New Jersey while ensuring that individuals participating in these retirement plans will have all the protections offered by federal law;

e. the New Jersey Small Business Retirement Marketplace should not place any financial burden upon taxpayers in the State and it should not be implemented if it is determined that there is any financial exposure to the State;

f. the New Jersey Small Business Retirement Marketplace will be the best way for New Jersey to close the retirement savings access gap, protect the fiscal stability of the State and its citizens well into the future, become a national leader in retirement and investor promotion and protection, and educate and promote retirement saving among employees and small employers;

g. according to a recent AARP poll, 86 percent of New Jersey residents age 35 and older say they hope to retire one day, but 65 percent are anxious about saving enough money so they could afford it, and AARP estimates that roughly 1.7 million private sector workers in New Jersey do not have access to a retirement savings plan through their employer, and the National Institute of Retirement Security describes this as a growing consumer crisis, because the typical family has saved only $2,500 for their retirement;

h. AARP has been instrumental in leading a national initiative called Work and Save to deal with retirement insecurity by promoting state run retirement programs, including the Washington Small Business Retirement Marketplace, signed into law in May 2015, designed to provide thousands of small business employees access to retirement plans by creating a voluntary public-private partnership marketplace that will educate small business employers on existing private sector retirement plan vendors;

i. the Washington marketplace was the result of public and private organizations coming together to find the most effective and efficient way to close the retirement savings access gap, and the following organizations have endorsed the Washington marketplace: AARP, Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, the American Council of Life Insurers, Washington Bankers Association, and various employer groups; and

j. by following this model, the New Jersey Small Business Retirement Marketplace will provide a market-based approach so that small businesses can offer a simple and inexpensive way to offer private savings to their employees, which will result in workers saving more for retirement throughout their lives.

L.2015, c.298, s.2.