The Treasury Department just released a proposed set of regulations that could have a meaningful impact on the retirement income market in the U.S.

The Treasury’s guidance package builds on feedback received in response to the request for comments issued by the Labor and Treasury Departments last fall.

The proposed regulations appear to be squarely focused on longevity risk.  The basis for this concern—particularly as it pertains to the middle class—is summarized in the following chart:

The UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education just released an interesting research report titled “Meeting California’s Retirement Security Challenge.”

The report has an introduction written by Jacob Hacker—a Political Science professor at Yale University.

Hacker’s introduction focuses on what he refers to as the “Great Risk Shift” and is appropriately titled “The Coming Age of Retirement Insecurity.”

Retirees and those saving for retirement should think of themselves as the managers of their own personal pension plan.  

Many people used to have access to a traditional, defined benefit pension plan through their employers.  With a defined benefit pension plan, someone else (an employer or professional managers hired by an employer) assumes responsibility for managing plan contributions, investments and income distributions. 

There is a case to be made for home equity as the most important source of retirement funding in the United States, and this would seem to make the reverse mortgage a critically important consumer financial product since the reverse mortgage allows an individual to convert home equity into cash.

The reason is that home equity represents a significant portion of the net worth of most retirement age households in the United States.  Consider, for example, some of the following statistics:

Tim Harrington is the Chairman and CEO of start-up eRollover.

Tim is a seasoned technology and consumer marketing entrepreneur.  Among Tim’s accomplishments is the ecommerce company Fogdog Sports--a venture he led from inception through successful IPO and post-IPO merger.

We had the opportunity to speak with Tim before his presentation at the Finovate conference in San Francisco.