Sponsors (2)
Introduced March 11, 2025 by James E. Banks · Last progress March 11, 2025
The bill strengthens protections against investments in and data transfers to sanctioned entities and foreign adversaries—improving national-security safeguards and transparency for retirement plans—but it raises compliance costs, legal uncertainty, and the risk of reduced investment options or lower returns for beneficiaries.
Retirement plan assets and participant data are protected from transfers to or investment in sanctioned entities and foreign adversaries, reducing national-security and fiduciary risk to beneficiaries.
Plan participants gain clearer disclosures and fiduciary accountability (fiduciary named; factors disclosed) and investors/regulators get standardized definitions, improving transparency and consistent oversight of investments tied to sanctioned or foreign-adversary entities.
Participants' personal data is explicitly shielded from transfers to foreign adversaries or sanctioned entities, lowering the risk of foreign access to sensitive beneficiary information.
Beneficiaries may face reduced investment options and potentially lower returns if plans divest from covered entities or are pressured to sell holdings, which can harm retirement balances for many Americans.
Plan sponsors, administrators, and fiduciaries will incur increased compliance and administrative costs to identify, value, monitor, block, and report covered-entity transactions across many federal lists.
Mandatory disclosures of detailed holdings and fiduciary assessments could expose sensitive investment strategies or counterparties, harming competitive positions of plan managers and counterparties.
Based on analysis of 3 sections of legislative text.
Prohibits ERISA-plan fiduciaries from transactions or data-sharing with foreign adversary or sanctioned entities and requires new disclosures and DOL rulemaking.
Prohibits fiduciaries of ERISA-covered retirement plans from permitting transactions that let a plan acquire interests in, lend to, provide goods/services to, transfer plan assets to, or share participant/beneficiary data with entities identified as foreign adversaries or sanctioned entities. It also requires plan documents and participant communications to disclose any existing holdings or agreements tied to such entities, and it adds new statutory definitions and a short timetable for Department of Labor regulations. Plans that already hold covered-entity investments or are bound by pre-enactment binding agreements may continue those holdings or perform under those agreements only if narrow disclosure and compliance conditions are met. The Department of Labor must issue implementing regulations within 180 days and those regulations must take effect within one year of enactment.