Trillions in Retirement Dollars Flow Into Opaque Trusts
4th May 2026
Bloomberg, a Voice of the Crust.
A little-talked about investment product is taking over the 401(k) world, and offering asset managers a way to increase exposure to private markets.
At the heart of the US retirement industry, underpinning the later-life plans of millions of Americans, is a set of financial products that hardly anyone can tell you a thing about.
No one knows exactly how much money they control. No one can say how it’s all allocated. No single financial regulator is in charge of them. Yet Collective Investment Trusts are now a multi-trillion dollar business to rival mutual funds or ETFs — and are poised to become the backdoor through which more private assets are added to Americans’ retirement savings.
For years now, the country’s biggest employers have been slowly migrating workers’ nest eggs toward these pooledehicles, which are used exclusively by retirement plans. For 401(k)s with more than 100 participants, about 40% of all assets were invested in CITs by 2024, according to Department of Labor data, up from 12% in 2010 and above the share allocated to mutual funds.
Notice the statist priorities: Knowing exactly how much money they control. Knowing how it’s all allocated. Most importantly, no single financial regulator is in charge of them.
Things that the agents of the Deep State can’t know, can’t track, and can’t regulate, are a threat. Voices of the Crust are here to tell you how you ought to think about them.