Small business retirement plans have been part of the progressive agenda for years--they receive annual lip service in President Barack Obama’s budget proposals, Democratic state legislatures are proposing mandatory plans and left-leaning academics like  economist Teresa Ghilarducci have floated them as a solution to an impending "retirement crisis."

Now the investment management division of Goldman Sachs is moving into the small business retirement space.

Last week, the firm announced that it is acquiring Honest Dollar, an Austin, Texas-based digital retirement savings platform “to serve the approximately 45 million Americans who do not have access to employer-sponsored retirement plans.”

Under the deal, which is expected to close in the second quarter of 2016, Honest Dollar will remain based in Austin. Neither firm disclosed any additional terms of the deal.

“Honest Dollar has created a simple solution to a complex retirement savings problem,” said Timothy J. O’Neill and Eric S. Lane, co-heads of Goldman Sachs’ investment management division, in a prepared statement. “Together, we have the potential to help millions of people achieve their investing goals.”

Chad Parks, CEO and founder of Ubiquity Retirement + Savings, a San Francisco-based company that provides IRA and 401(k) solutions to the small business space, wasn’t surprised by the announcement.

“We’ve noticed this group of pop-up retirement plan providers like Honest Dollar. In the last year there’s been a bunch of them that have decided that this small business retirement market needs a lot of attention paid to it, and I agree—that’s exactly where we’ve been focused,” Parks says. “Traditionally, participants in this space have paid high fees for poor outcomes. I feel like this validates what we’ve been saying, that there’s a huge need here.”

On the other hand, Parks argues that Goldman’s choice raises some questions.

“It’s perplexing to me that a company like Goldman would be interested,” Parks says. “If you’re going shopping in the retirement space and you’re looking for the next big thing, there are probably better options out there.

Goldman’s entry could generate more interest in the small plan space from wirehouse firms and large independent broker-dealers, Parks says. “We’ll likely see some large institutions make it official that they want to have a solution for that market," he said. "More will be drawn to it because Goldman has decided to be the first.”

Parks says the cost of offering retirement plans like 401(k)s has traditionally kept many small businesses away, and the complexity of record keeping and advising around the plans has prevented many asset managers from involving themselves in the small-to-midsize plan space.

Honest Dollar allows employees of small and mid-sized businesses, self employed individuals and independent contractors to establish IRA-based savings programs to quickly begin saving for their retirement.

Honest Dollar IRAs have a low-end cost of around $8 per employee per month. The participant onboarding process can take as little as 90 seconds — after a short risk tolerance profile, the platform offers participants a simple portfolio of Vanguard ETFs.

“It’s a good idea,” says Parks. “I don’t want to scare anyone away from the 401(k) space by saying they’re too complicated. They’re really not, but we think that if you want to reach the larger audience, it helps to start out with the less-complicated plans.”