Cetera Launches Financial Wellness Program for Advisers to Offer

Cetera has launched a Workplace Financial Wellness program for its network of 8,000 financial professionals to help businesses across the United States provide financial education to their employees.

Available through Cetera’s Resiliency Pack, it can be incorporated into a human resources (HR) benefits package and offered by business owners to employees.

Workplace Financial Wellness features eight financial professional-led modules focused on topics including financial literacy, homeownership, insurance, savings, 401(k) guidance and more. Its purpose is to facilitate better and more holistic financial decisionmaking and create opportunities for financial professionals to deliver more valued financial guidance.

The new offering can be bundled with an investment professional’s delivery of a retirement plan to small businesses, or it can be offered on an education-only basis.

John Hancock’s Sixth Annual Financial Stress Survey shows more than half of employees worry at least once a week about personal finances while on the job, causing workplace distraction and a loss of productivity. This loss of productivity, combined with absenteeism from financial stress, is costing more than an estimated $1,900 per year, per employee, and totaling an estimated annual loss of $1 million for midsized employers and $19 million for large employers, according to the survey.

“Not only does it create the opportunity for a differentiated benefit, but it also drives an engaged workforce,” says Jon Anderson, head of Retirement Plan Solutions. “This offering provides Cetera-affiliated financial professionals an entry-point to creating lifelong relationships with the employees at these firms, helping them achieve financial well-being at each life stage.”

Workplace Financial Wellness can be accessed via Cetera’s MarketingCentral platform as a “workshop-in-a-box” and is proprietary to Cetera with customizable marketing materials and learning modules. It also includes a feature for program participants to access Cetera’s AdviceWorks client portal to store key financial documents, integrate planning steps within a secure platform and collaborate with a financial professional.