Products July 9, 2019

ICMA-RC’s Plan Health Monitor Provides Plan and Participant Readiness Analytics

Advisers can use the tool to help retirement plan sponsors make educated decisions about how to improve their plans.

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ICMA-RC, a financial services organization that provides retirement plans and related services for public-sector retirement accounts, is now utilizing GuidedChoice’s retirement readiness projection data to improve participant outcomes.

The projection data will be available to plan sponsors through ICMA-RC’s new Plan Health Monitor. With this online tool, ICMA-RC plan sponsors and associated consultants will be able to analyze retirement readiness at both the plan and participant level—including segmentation views across key demographics to include age, salary, contribution rate or geography.

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Armed with these projections, plan sponsors and consultants can more easily identify participants who might be falling behind, provide data-driven advice, and ultimately, make more strategic plan design decisions. Retirement readiness and other key plan health metrics can be tracked over time and are securely accessed by plan sponsors and consultants. 

The participant retirement readiness projections found in the Plan Health Monitor are developed utilizing data provided by GuidedChoice using its proprietary investment methodology and displayed using a monitoring dashboard developed by dailyVest, a fintech data and analytics provider.

“One of the biggest problems for plan sponsors and advisers has always been the inability to easily access and garner insights from participant data that would help them identify problem areas within retirement plans,” says Sherrie Grabot, founder and CEO at GuidedChoice. “Now that Guided Choice and ICMA-RC have made that easy for them, they can drill down to really see what is working, or not, and make educated decisions about how to improve the plan.”
Data & Research July 9, 2019

Timing Savings Options With a Raise Can Help With Financial Wellness

Seventy-five percent of workers said that if they were offered savings options at the time of a raise, they would be less stressed and more confident about their finances, according to a survey from Commonwealth.

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PLANSPONSOR’s Plan Sponsor of the Year Award Winner General Health System coordinates automatic escalations of employee deferrals 1% each year with merit increases, as do many other retirement plan sponsors. And a study shows this is good practice.

A new report from Commonwealth looked at the results of timing opening a savings account with an employee’s raise, as well as split direct-deposit paychecks, low-interest loans and helping employees open a savings account. Its survey of 100 employees making less than $60,000 found that helping employees navigate financial insecurity can boost their productivity, retention and loyalty.

Seventy-five percent of workers said that if they were offered savings options at the time of a raise, they would be less stressed and more confident about their finances. Commonwealth analysts found that the probability of employees being able to save increases by 2% for every additional dollar earned up to $20 per hour.

“The moment of a raise is a unique opportunity to build employees’ financial security—with benefits for workers and firms alike,” says Timothy Flacke, executive director at Commonwealth. “Employers that offer sensible tools and incentives to help employees save can both bolster worker financial security, and realize the benefits of employees being less impacted by financial anxiety and, ultimately, more productive.”

The survey also found 63% of respondents said they would like the opportunity to use split direct deposit between checking and savings. This also suggests employees would be willing to participate in a sidecar, or rainy day fund, savings account if employers offered one. A survey by the AARP Public Policy Institute found that 70% of workers would voluntarily enroll in such a program.

“Increased wage moments in particular provide a unique opportunity for employers to provide low-cost, high-value and easy to implement interventions,” Commonwealth says. “Employees believe that savings tools provided by their employers would lead them to be happier, more productive employees.”

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