401(k) Roundtable

401(k) Roundtable covers retirement plans from the viewpoint of the people responsible for making them work. It is not a personal-finance pep talk. Rick Unser leads structured conversations with guests who bring market, legal, academic, HR, and investment perspectives to the same basic question: what helps a retirement plan serve employees while staying prudent for the organization behind it? The show is steady and professional, with room for detail. Recent episodes move from inflation, interest rates, AI, tariffs, and global equity performance into the decisions those forces raise for asset allocation and long-term financial wellness. The market discussions are practical rather than theatrical. Guests talk about U.S. concentration, international opportunities, dollar strength, Europe, Japan, China, Taiwan, bonds, bear markets, and the discipline of diversification. Other episodes shift from markets to behavior. John Beshears and Brad Champagne examine automatic features, participant choices, loan repayment moments, Roth contributions, and how plan design can use timely prompts without changing take-home pay. The show also spends meaningful time with employers. Robert Fortin and Christina Cox bring the conversation into benefits departments, where union and non-union plan design, Secure 2.0, employee engagement, and total rewards communication have to fit real workforces. Legal and fiduciary issues get equally concrete. Todd Solomon discusses ERISA litigation, Department of Labor changes, committee caution, share classes, and the tension between careful stewardship and fear-driven sameness. The retirement-policy episodes widen the frame to Social Security, the so-called retirement crisis, and the roles of employers and government. Private equity appears through pension-plan allocations, institutional investors, liquidity, shrinking public markets, and possible retirement-plan access. The pacing is measured. The vocabulary assumes a listener comfortable with plan committees, investment policy, recordkeeping, fiduciary process, and benefits strategy. Its appeal is the way it connects macro conditions to the day-to-day mechanics of plan governance. For committees, HR leaders, fiduciaries, and finance teams, it offers informed conversation without treating complexity as a flaw.