Michael Kreps is co-chair of Groom’s Retirement Services & Fiduciary Group, and he works with a wide variety of clients on complex retirement and health plan issues.  His firsthand experience with the legislative and regulatory process gives him a perspective that is often instrumental in helping clients develop and implement effective compliance and advocacy strategies.

Michael advises many of the country’s largest benefit plans and service providers on issues related to plan governance, administration, funding, and restructuring.  Michael is an expert on benefit plan recordkeeping and the development of complex financial and insurance products. He also serves as fund counsel to some of the largest benefit plans in the country, including public retirement systems and VEBAs.  Michael helps clients address complex pension funding challenges for both single employer and Taft-Hartley (multiemployer) plans, and he has been involved in over a dozen distress terminations before the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC).

As a zealous advocate, Michael routinely represents clients before regulators and Congress.  He has successfully navigated dozens of Department of Labor (DOL) investigations, including a large number of service provider “book of business” audits.  Michael also has secured federal legislation on behalf of clients to, among other things, change the pension funding rules for community newspapers, facilitate retirement plan participation by homecare workers, and provide pension funding relief to a national non-profit.

From the 111^th through the 114^th Congresses, Michael served as the Senior Pensions and Employment Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.  He managed all aspects of the Committee’s retirement agenda and had primary staff responsibility for pension legislation, including the pension investment provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, the funding stabilization and Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation reform provisions of the MAP-21 Act of 2012, the Pension Relief Act of 2010, and the CSEC Pension Flexibility Act. He also led the Committee’s oversight of regulatory activities involving employee benefit plans.

Michael serves as external general counsel for the Committee on Investment of Employee Benefit Assets (CIEBA) and is on the Executive Committee of the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association (DCIIA).  He is a graduate of the George Washington University Law School (JD with honors), the University of Colorado (with distinction), and the Sorensen Institute Political Leaders Program.