Voya Financial and SecureSave to Offer Emergency Savings Program to Workplace Clients

Voya Financial Inc. announced a collaboration with SecureSave, a workplace emergency savings program, which is now available as an out-of-plan solution to Voya’s clients.

“As the workplace benefits and savings landscape continues to evolve and grow more complicated for employees and for employers, emergency savings solutions can be all that more critical for retirement plan advisers when it comes to supporting the holistic wellness needs of individuals today,” says a Voya spokesperson.

An effective financial wellness program must inspire individuals to act and make it easy to do so through an impactful solution, the spokesperson states.

“Working together with advisers, this new relationship provides further support—that is easy to implement, customize and monitor savings goals—to help employees better prepare for their ‘rainy day’ needs,” the Voya spokesperson says.

Clients of Voya, regardless of size, can enroll in the program if they want to supplement their existing workplace benefits and savings plan with an emergency savings account option. The program also provides an after-tax savings option supported by voluntary paycheck deferrals.

“We are excited about our strategic relationship with Voya providing a complete emergency savings solution that’s automated, easy to deploy and impactful,” Devin Miller, co-founder and CEO of SecureSave, said in a statement.

To reduce the administrative burden on human resource personnel, the program offers simple implementation and management, Voya stated, including quick employee account activation and pre-built connectivity with numerous major payroll systems. The program also provides advanced reporting, with information on employee signup statistics and withdrawal reasons.

In the event of an emergency, many people turn to their retirement savings. Almost half (47%) of Americans “strongly agree” or “agree” that their retirement plan savings are the only significant emergency savings they have, according to a Voya survey, which was conducted among 1,000 adults in the United States aged 18 and older from January 22 to 23.

The program offered by SecureSave aims to promote financial health by providing plan participants accounts they can access in an emergency that are separate from their retirement savings. The program has produced results. With a 62% adoption rate, employees keep their savings in their SecureSave emergency savings accounts at an average retention rate of 87% as of January 2024.

“For employers, it’s important to recognize that helping support short-term needs today can also help improve employees’ long-term savings goals,” Tom Armstrong, vice president of customer analytics and insight and head of the Behavioral Finance Institute for Innovation at Voya Financial, said in a statement. “A well-designed workplace emergency savings benefit program can be a critical solution to get there.”