Benefits Lawyer Nominated to Lead PBGC | Chief Investment Officer

President Joe Biden Thursday nominated Deva Kyle, a counsel at law firm Cohen, Weiss and Simon LLP, as director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation.

Deva Kyle

Kyle would serve a five-year term as director if the Senate approves the appointment. Ann Orr has been serving as acting director since the April 30 end to Gordon Hartogensis’ term. The PBGC is a federally chartered insurer that backstops private pension funds in the U.S.

Kyle joined Cohen, Weiss and Simon in 2022 as a counsel and advises clients on a wide range of employee benefits, federal tax and legislative matters. Cohen, Weiss and Simon is the same firm for which Assistant Secretary of Labor Lisa Gomez worked before leaving to run the Employee Benefit Security Administration.

Kyle began her career in 2004 with the PBGC, where she eventually served as staff director in the Office of Policy and External Affairs, leading the agency’s multiemployer pension policy efforts. In 2015 and 2016, Kyle worked at the Department of the Treasury, where, with a team of Treasury leaders, she crafted the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act program regulations and processes.

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She returned to the PBGC in 2017 to serve as acting deputy chief of negotiations and restructuring, leading PBGC’s single and multiemployer programs.

She also served as tax counsel on detail to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means, developing legislation for the introduction of the MPRA program.

Kyle earned a B.A. in sociology from Vassar College and a J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center.

Kendra Isaacson, a principal at public policy consultancy Mindset and a former counsel for the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, is a former colleague of Kyle’s and says she is extremely qualified for the director role and “understands the technical ins and outs of the single and multiemployer programs” at the PBGC.

John Lowell, a partner in October Three Consulting, said in an email response that unlike a number of previous appointees to this role, Kyle comes to the position with PBGC and Treasury experience.

“In particular, she has extensive experience working with multiemployer plans—obviously a high priority in recent years and currently for [the] PBGC,” Lowell said. “While a nominee’s background is rarely a complete tip-off as to how they will handle their role, this suggests that the administration and its advisers would like to see the continuation of and perhaps increase in private sector pensions for rank-and-file workers.”

The National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans Executive Director Michael Scott also expressed his support for Kyle’s nomination.

“[Kyle’s] extensive experience at the PBGC, as well as in the private sector representing defined-benefit plans, will allow her to provide the PBGC with the leadership the nation needs to protect the retirement security of millions of Americans whose pensions are insured by the PBGC’s single-employer and multiemployer guaranty programs,” Scott stated. “Deva’s demonstrated expertise in defined benefit plans, her political skills and her ability to work in a bipartisan manner will serve the PBGC and its stakeholders well. NCCMP urges bipartisan support for her nomination as well as a swift confirmation by the Senate.”

Senator Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, urged President Joe Biden in a July 9 letter to choose a nominee who “both acknowledges [the] PBGC’s historic shortcomings and has concrete plans to solve them in a manner unafflicted by partisan politics.”

Cassidy argued in his letter that the PBGC is plagued by operational problems that have “cost taxpayers money, put pension plans at near-catastrophic levels of underfunding and caused delays that prevented pension funds from being able to quickly right their financial status.”

The senator also voiced concerns over the rollout of the Special Financial Assistance program implemented through the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. He further argued that the PBGC has created challenges for single-employer plans by “failing to timely provide necessary information that would help them correct their financial problems.”

In response to Cassidy’s letter, Isaacson says she believes Kyle fits the bill of having a bipartisan track record and substantive experience on the subjects that Cassidy laid out.

“[Kyle] is an attorney that has been working with compliance and counseling clients on these matters, … so I feel like she is a nominee that [Cassidy’s] office could work with,” Isaacson says.

As both the Senate Health and Finance Committees have jurisdiction over the PBGC, both committees will need to vote on Kyle’s nomination before it goes to a vote of the full Senate.

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Tags: Ann Orr, Deva Kyle, John Lowell, Kendra Isaacson, leadership, Michael Scott, National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans, Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, Senator Bill Cassidy

In response to governance issues at STRS Ohio, a consolidation of the state’s five retirement systems was proposed at an Ohio Retirement Study Council meeting.

Controversy continues to roil the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio, and the fund’s board is divided between two factions, including a reformer faction that wants to switch the fund’s assets to passive index funds.

The reformer faction also seeks to implement more cost-of-living adjustments for fund beneficiaries and is critical of tens of millions of dollars set aside for investment staff bonus compensation, something the board of STRS rejected for fiscal 2025.

At a Monday meeting of the legislative oversight agency, the Ohio Retirement Study Council, state representative Phil Plummer proposed consolidating the five major state pension systems in response to some of the STRS governance issues.

The council advises the state legislature on benefits, funding, investments and administration of the plans, which include: the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio, the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, the School Employees Retirement System of Ohio, the Ohio Highway Patrol Retirement System and the Ohio Police & Fire Pension Fund.

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As of January 1, 2023, the five systems had combined assets of approximately $225 billion, with approximately 655,000 active contributing members, 1,100,000 inactive members and 486,000 beneficiaries and recipients, according to the council. That combined asset size would create one of the largest defined benefit pension funds in the U.S.

“There are five different processes. Certain boards can do this, certain boards can do that, certain systems are getting [cost of living adjustments], certain systems aren’t: Maybe we ought to look at combining some of these systems,” said Plummer at Monday’s ORSC meeting.

Plummer pointed to the overhead costs of running five different pension systems with five different investment staffs, saying the state’s taxpayers cannot afford to give more money to the pensions.

Bethany Rhodes, director and general counsel of the Ohio Retirement Study Council, noted that any merger of the pension funds would look more like a receivership, in which the board of one pension fund would run the others. “If you were to put STRS with PERS, the PERS board would effectively run STRS, until such time as they can be merged in,” Rhodes said.

Multiple Ohio pension funds declined to comment on the proposal.

“STRS Ohio staff has ongoing conversations with state lawmakers and will provide legislators with all requested information as they continue their discussions about the governance of the pension system,” a spokesperson for the pension fund told CIO, noting that STRS’ performance for the past 20 years was in the 97th percentile of investment consultant Meketa’s plan sponsor peer group.

No legislation has been introduced to merge the systems. A spokesperson for SERS Ohio told CIO the proposal is unnecessary, as “the problems [the] proposed solution seeks to address do not exist at Ohio SERS,” the spokesperson said. “Our financial condition is solid. We have reduced liabilities and improved our funded status. And we have not requested, and do not need, additional employer contributions. There is nothing broken at SERS that needs to be fixed.”

Earlier this year, Wade Steen, a board member of STRS, was reinstated to his board position by an Ohio court after he had been removed by Ohio Governor Mike DeWine. Steen and fellow board member and reformer Rudy Fichtenbaum were accused by DeWine and Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost in a lawsuit of planning to transfer $65 billion of the pension fund’s assets to a private investment entity known as QED Systematic Solutions, to which the lawsuit claims Steen and Fichtenbaum are connected.

Following the reinstatement of Steen to the board, STRS consultant Aon abruptly resigned. STRS board member Steve Forman, a reformer, resigned at the end of June, following a meeting of the STRS board.