The 2015 Pension 40: Laurence Fink

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Laurence Fink
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer /
BlackRock
Last year: 8

As one of the first mortgage-backed-securities traders on Wall Street, Laurence Fink has long been good with numbers. But one number the chairman and CEO of asset management giant BlackRock is not good with these days is the $136,200 in retirement savings that the typical 55- to 65-year-old American has socked away — which equates to just $9,150 in postretirement annual income for someone who stops working at 65 — according to a survey last summer by his New York–based firm. “The lack of retirement savings is a growing problem for this country,” says Fink, 63, who co-founded BlackRock in 1988, when 401(k) plans were dwarfed in size by traditional defined benefit pension plans. Today defined contribution plans dominate the retirement landscape, shifting the investment decision making from companies to individuals, compounding the problem, Fink says. BlackRock’s research has found that many Americans have a deep fear of investing and have parked 65 percent of their wealth in cash. With two thirds of the money it manages in the U.S. tied to retirement, BlackRock has a responsibility to be a leader on these issues, Fink says. “The key is education,” he explains. “We need to make the concept of investing and preparedness for retirement a conversation of today. If we have that conversation and we have an organized path, then there will be less fear.” In November, BlackRock launched iRetire, a software platform that provides financial advisers with sophisticated tools and resources to help clients determine how much they need to retire and what they can do to get there. Fink is also concerned about the gap between the assets and the liabilities of state public pension funds. “The funding gap is going to have a pronounced impact on state spending for infrastructure,” he notes. “It could be a major drag on the U.S. economy.”

The 2015 Pension 40