How BlackRock’s new 401(k) design brings private markets into everyday retirement plans

Key takeaways

• BlackRock’s new LifePath Solutions framework lets employers blend private equity, private credit and annuities into target-date 401(k) funds.
• A 2020 Labor Department information letter and a 2025 executive order cleared regulatory ground for private assets in retirement plans before this launch.
• Fidelity and Vanguard have also introduced annuity-linked retirement-income products; Vanguard’s launched in late 2025, while Fidelity’s won’t launch until 2027.

BlackRock said on September 16, 2026, that it had unveiled LifePath Solutions, a customizable target-date design framework letting employers blend public stocks and bonds with private equity, private credit and annuities inside corporate 401(k) plans.

The framework is built on BlackRock’s LifePath platform, which the firm said now manages $770 billion in defined-contribution assets after roughly three decades in operation. It extends a strategy the firm began testing in 2025, when it built a custom target-date glidepath containing private markets for a smaller retirement-plan provider, and arrives more than a year after federal regulators moved to open the door to alternative assets in retirement accounts.

A Framework Built for Smaller Plan Sponsors

LifePath Solutions is designed to let employers of varying sizes tailor target-date portfolios to their own workforce rather than adopt a standardized fund lineup, according to BlackRock. The company said the framework analyzes a plan sponsor’s industry, benefits and participant demographics to help set the glidepath and risk level, then lets the employer choose among index, active or “whole-portfolio” approaches that combine private and public market investments with guaranteed income options.

Jaime Magyera, BlackRock’s head of retirement and U.S. wealth advisory, said retirement is “entering a new era” as plan sponsors look for better ways to help workers save. Nick Nefouse, the firm’s global head of retirement solutions, said the new offering draws on three decades of research into how people save and retire.

BlackRock cited its own 2026 survey findings to explain the timing: nearly 70% of Americans believe they are on track for retirement, even though workplace savings are projected to replace only 50% to 60% of the income they will need, the firm said. It also reported that roughly three-quarters of participants want access to private markets through their workplace plan and about 80% want more personalized investment guidance.

The Regulatory Timeline
The Labor Department first said in a June 3, 2020 letter that private equity could sit inside 401(k) target-date funds; it added cautionary conditions in December 2021, then rescinded that caution on August 12, 2025, five days after a presidential executive order pushed regulators to expand alternative-asset access in retirement plans.

Private Markets Already Have a Foothold

BlackRock had already tested the private-markets piece of this strategy. In June 2025, the firm announced it had been selected by Great Gray Trust Company, which manages $210 billion across more than 770 funds, to build a custom glidepath for what BlackRock described as Great Gray’s first target-date retirement solution incorporating private equity and private credit exposure. Wilshire Advisors was named to oversee implementation and manage liquidity in that arrangement.

BlackRock’s stated long-term allocation vision for a blended portfolio is roughly 50% public equities, 30% public fixed income and 20% private markets. The firm said its own research found that purpose-built private-market allocations could add about 50 basis points of annual performance to a target-date fund, compounding to roughly 15% more retirement savings over a 40-year career. Rob Barnett, Great Gray’s chief executive, said access to private markets had historically been “limited to institutions, leaving many retirement savers behind.”

BlackRock also pointed to a 2025 survey finding that 21% of retirement plan advisers said they planned to include private markets in the defined-contribution plans they manage — evidence, the firm said, that the shift extends beyond its own products.

Annuities Move Deeper Into the 401(k)

The other pillar of BlackRock’s pitch is guaranteed income. The firm’s existing LifePath Paycheck product, which functions as a target-date fund until age 55, then begins shifting roughly 10% of a participant’s balance into lifetime-income units, growing to about 30% by age 65 if not annuitized. Participants can use those units to purchase an annuity between ages 59½ and 71. As of December 2024, six plan sponsors had made the product live and nine more were implementing it; BlackRock’s own retirement plan, with $4.1 billion in assets and 14,416 participants as of the end of 2023, had roughly 8,500 workers covered by the option. BlackRock uses LifePath Paycheck as its plan’s qualified default investment alternative.

BlackRock is not alone in pairing target-date funds with annuities. Fidelity has said it will launch a product called Freedom Lifetime in 2027 that starts as a standard target-date fund before allowing retirees to convert savings into annuities issued by New York Life and Nationwide. Molly Cunningham, Fidelity’s head of workplace lifetime financial help, said the goal was to maximize lifetime income while keeping the experience simple for participants and plan sponsors. Vanguard announced its own Target Retirement Lifetime Income Trusts in late 2025; Brian Miller, the firm’s head of multi-asset product management, said the funds are meant to help “turn savings into steady income.”

Industry data suggest the appetite for these designs is real but still limited. Callan’s 2025 defined-contribution trends survey found 19% of respondents were actively considering combining target-date funds with immediate annuities. Only 15% of private-sector workers currently have a traditional pension, following a 71% decline in defined-benefit plans since 1979, according to the same reporting, while 75% of survey respondents said guaranteed lifetime income would make them happy.

BlackRock’s own survey found that nearly three-quarters of retirement-plan participants want access to private markets through their workplace plan.

Washington Cleared the Path First

BlackRock’s move follows, rather than precedes, a shift in federal policy. The Labor Department issued an information letter on June 3, 2020, stating that a plan fiduciary would not, solely by including a private-equity component in a professionally managed asset-allocation fund such as a target-date fund, violate ERISA’s duties. A supplemental statement issued December 21, 2021, added conditions: fiduciaries needed the expertise to evaluate private equity’s added complexity, longer time horizons, lower liquidity and higher fees, or had to engage advisers who did. That 2021 statement was itself rescinded on August 12, 2025.

The rescission followed an August 7, 2025, executive order directing federal regulators to support broader use of alternative assets — including private equity, real estate and actively managed digital-asset vehicles — in retirement plans. The order gave the Labor Department 180 days to clarify fiduciary responsibilities for asset-allocation funds containing alternatives and to propose rules or guidance, including what the order called “appropriately calibrated safe harbors.” It also directed the Securities and Exchange Commission to revise its own regulations to facilitate alternative-asset access in participant-directed plans. Separately, the Labor Department had already rescinded, in a May 2025 release, 2022 guidance from the prior administration that had urged “extreme care” before offering cryptocurrency options in 401(k)s.

What Comes Next

BlackRock’s retirement business, and the LifePath franchise underpinning both its private-markets glidepaths and its annuity products, is at the heart of the LifePath Solutions launch. AdvisorHub, covering the September 16 announcement, described the initiative as one that could bring private assets and guaranteed-income products into defined-contribution plans, extending strategies once reserved for pensions and institutional investors to a broader set of workers while also opening a new source of capital for private markets — a characterization the outlet offered as analysis rather than a claim BlackRock itself made.

How far the design spreads may depend on the Labor Department’s follow-through. The August 2025 executive order gave the department 180 days to propose new fiduciary guidance and safe harbors and directed the SEC to revise its own rules for participant-directed plans.

Photo: Kidfly182 · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons