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Earlier this year, we published about the California Secure Choice Retirement Savings Program (“CSC”) – a new law championed by state that aims to connect California’s private sector workers with retirement accounts and curb of senior poverty. In California, over six million private sector workers—disproportionately women, and — currently lack access to retirement accounts through their employers, which . CSC would automatically enroll these workers in portable accounts with a modest guaranteed rate of return.

At the time of our brief’s publication, the next steps for CSC were appointing its nine-member Investment Board and raising funds from private and non-profit groups to conduct a market analysis. The market analysis will evaluate likely participation rates, investment product design, contribution levels, and other variables that will affect the feasibility and mechanics of implementing the program. Today, the program has filled all but two of the positions on its , which held its on September 4^th. Fundraising for the feasibility study is ongoing.

As we noted in our paper, CSC is a promising innovation that could serve as a model for similar programs throughout the country (and are already emerging). However, there remain a range of important policy considerations regarding the specifics of its design, including ideal default features and account options. We also urged the program’s administrators not to overlook the fact that insufficient emergency savings are a from retirement accounts. To that end, simultaneously promoting flexible use savings, such as by passing a that provides an incentive for a range of both short- and long-term savings goals, would strengthen CSC’s effectiveness by enabling workers to actually preserve their retirement savings for retirement.

This fall, researchers, financial services providers, and other retirement experts have an opportunity to weigh in on these and other issues. Following its initial meeting, the CSC Investment Board released a soliciting feedback about the plan’s structure, design, administration and costs. The Board will be accepting responses until November 15, 2013.  

To read more about the specifics of CSC and our policy suggestions for making it most effective, check out our full policy paper. To sign up for email updates about the program from the California Treasury, fill out the form at .