Recently the Retirement Security Project at the Brookings Institution hosted an event with the Social Security Administration and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

Carolyn W. Colvin, acting commissioner of Social Security, joined Richard Cordray, CFPB director, to give keynote remarks about helping people plan for retirement.

Social Security presented retirement planning tools available at my Social Security, a secure, online hub for doing business with the agency. More than 21 million people have created a personal online account.

Approximately 168 million workers pay toward Social Security coverage through taxes on their earnings—and almost 60 million people receive monthly Social Security benefits. Around two-thirds, or 40 million of these beneficiaries, are retired workers or their dependents. However, many workers paying into Social Security know little about how the system works.

“Because we’re living longer, healthier lives, we can expect to spend more time in retirement than our parents and grandparents did. Creating a sound retirement plan is vitally important. Social Security provides secure online services for our customers—including the my Social Security suite of services, the Retirement Estimator, and the online retirement application,” said Acting Commissioner Colvin.

A panel discussion on efforts to improve retirement planning included guests Jonnelle Marte, financial reporter with The Washington Post, Olivia S. Mitchell, International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and Jean Setzfand, senior vice president of programs at AARP.