PUGIX Putnam Global Utilities Fund Class A (MM)

Speaking at the National Institute on Retirement Security in Washington, D.C. today, Robert L. Reynolds, President and Chief Executive Officer, Putnam Investments, urged Congress and the Obama administration to launch a comprehensive effort this year to strengthen all of America’s retirement savings systems, public and private.

Reynolds called for the establishment of a bipartisan commission to deliver an action plan to make Social Security solvent by the day after the 2010 election — to generate a more thoughtful, less polarizing outcome. Additionally, Reynolds urged Congress to concurrently extend workplace savings coverage to all American workers, make all existing workplace plans more automatic and support robust competition among lifetime income solutions — both annuities and non-annuity variants.

In his remarks shared at the industry event, Reynolds noted that if no action is taken soon, today’s retirement savings status quo threatens to inflict severe financial stress on future generations of retirees — even to pay for food, housing and medicine. “Americans know we need to transition our country away from debt and leverage, moving toward a greater reliance on savings, investment and new business formation to reboot sustainable economic growth.” Reynolds continued, “Creating a robust, resilient and truly secure public and private retirement system should be at the heart of that effort.”

Solving America’s retirement savings challenge calls for new alliances and collaboration between political parties, social groups, financial industries and private industry explained Reynolds. “We’re all in this together,” he noted, “Democrats and Republicans, wealthy, middle-class and lower-income, public and private sectors. This is not something one party or industry can solve. This is an American challenge we need to meet.”

Reynolds, a 30-year veteran of the retirement savings industry, suggested that retirement reform should include the following key elements:

Make Social Security Solvent:

• Appoint a bipartisan commission to develop a compromise plan to make Social Security solvent and deliver it to Congress by November 3, 2010.
• The plan should not include an increase in payroll taxes, and it must ensure that the retirement benefit levels of lower-income Americans be maintained. All other steps to enhance solvency should be open for compromise.

Extend Access to Workplace Savings Plans to All Workers

• Offer the 78 million Americans, roughly half the country’s work force, who do not have a workplace saving plan coverage through either a universal IRA or a significantly simplified low-cost version of the 401(k) plan or both.
• Among existing workplace plans, speed the implementation of the core elements of the Pension Protection Act of 2006 including automatic enrollment, savings escalation, and guidance to qualified default investment options. These elements should be made mandatory.

Build in Lifetime Income Options

• Create an optional national insurance charter and a new regulatory body empowered to approve, or deny approval to, qualified lifetime income products including annuity and non-annuity products.
• Create a new lifetime income security fund, comparable to the FDIC in banking, to back up lifetime income guarantees from insurers whether offered “in-plan” or as choices people make when rolling over from a workplace savings plan to individual accounts.
• Require all workplace savings plan providers to offer such options to all employees, but leave employees free to choose or reject lifetime income options.
• Provide strong tax incentives to employees who invest in insured lifetime income products, since converting life savings into lifelong income is even more challenging than accumulating a nest egg.
• Provide strong legal protection to employers who offer automatic enrollment, as well as access to advice, guidance and lifetime income guarantee products in their savings plans.

“Ensuring the solvency of the Social Security system and extending the workplace savings system to nearly all working Americans, not just half, are the best ways to tackle America’s retirement challenge and raise America’s national confidence,” Reynolds suggested. “If we move this year — and finish the job in 2011, we can genuinely solve this issue. Future generations of working Americans could then feel more secure and more empowered in their work lives: more willing to change jobs, learn skills, start a business, or pursue a dream. And we Americans could show the world — and ourselves — that we can control our destiny. That’s a goal worth struggling for, and 2010 is the year to start making it a reality.”

Putnam Investments and Retirement

Reynolds most recent remarks continue a drive he launched in May 2009, when he outlined a vision of what he termed “Workplace Savings 3.0.” Reynolds then proposed changing the focus of retirement policy and industry practice from just accumulating assets to generating lifelong income in retirement, the details of which can be found at the retirement savings challenge Web site.

Since beginning that campaign, Putnam has since launched a series of retirement initiatives, including the Roth IRA Resource Center which offers a full range of information about individual retirement account (IRA) conversions, how to evaluate whether they make sense, and how to perform them. The Roth IRA Resource Center is aimed at financial advisors, who are dealing with a flood of demand from their clients for advice on conversions since a tax law change took effect on January 1, 2010, eliminating income caps that restricted higher-income investors from converting traditional IRA assets to Roth IRAs.

Putnam also has expanded the services it offers to 401(k) retirement plans and developed products to meet the needs of those planning for or already in retirement. The firm has created a platform that provides flexible and scalable services and solutions for advisors, consultants, and their plan sponsor clients in every segment of the retirement market.

Putnam RetirementReady® Funds, the firm’s suite of 10 target-date/lifecycle retirement funds, recently added target Absolute Return Funds* to its mix of underlying investments. By doing so, RetirementReady Funds became the only suite of lifecycle funds in the country to integrate absolute return strategies. Employed in retirement portfolios, Putnam Absolute Return Funds are intended to pursue positive returns, over a period of three years or more, in up and down markets, to protect against the harmful effects of adverse investment returns and to seek to reduce volatility, particularly for investors in or near retirement.

About Putnam Investments

Founded in 1937, Putnam Investments is a leading global money management firm with over 70 years of investment experience. The firm was recently ranked #1 out of 61 fund families based on its funds’ performance during 2009 in a Lipper/Barron’s Fund Families Survey. At the end of January 2010, Putnam had $113 billion in assets under management. Putnam has offices in Boston, London, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Tokyo, Singapore, and Sydney. For more information, visit putnam.com.

Putnam mutual funds are distributed by Putnam Retail Management.

* Putnam’s target Absolute Return Funds are not intended to outperform stocks and bonds during strong market rallies.

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