Investment Product and Service Launches

Wealthcare Launches New Enhancements to its Patented Comfort Zone

Wealthcare Capital Management LLC, a technology-enabled full-service registered investment adviser that supports independent financial advisers, and a NewSpring Holdings platform company, has launched its upgraded Comfort Zone technology, providing financial advisers with a digital dashboard that helps clients visualize and plan for their futures in a simplified way.

The platform combines analytics and status reports into a new digital dashboard to create an easy-to-understand visual snapshot of how a client is tracking toward their financial and life goals, making abstract concepts real and quantifiable.

Comfort Zone enables clients to see how their financial decisions connect to their goals and facilitates clients playing a more active role in their financial journey. Together, GDX360—Wealthcare’s values-based, goals-driven experience model—and Comfort Zone seek to help advisers develop stronger relationships, maximize client loyalty, build new business, and continue to scale.

Transamerica Introduces Workplace Universal Life Insurance

Transamerica has announced the availability of a new universal life insurance policy, designed specifically to be a voluntary workplace benefit, and a combination of available riders that, for a fee, could potentially pay up to three times the value of the policy’s death benefit.

Key benefits of Transamerica Universal Life Insurance include:

• Guaranteed issue with no health questions to qualified applicants
• Permanent life insurance with flexible premiums
• Multiple premium rating structures
• Cash value accumulation that can be borrowed from
• A multi-year guaranteed issue may be available to accommodate more accessible enrollment
• Guaranteed issue may be available for working spouses or stay-at-home parents
• Rates that do not increase solely due to getting older

Available with Transamerica Universal Life Insurance are three optional riders designed to add value by providing benefits for living policyholders and maintaining the value of the original death benefit. 

Transamerica’s Chronic Condition Rider pays an accelerated benefit for insureds with chronic conditions and is designed to help address financial needs while they are still alive. Benefits of the Chronic Condition Rider include:

• The permanence of the chronic condition does affect the availability of the benefit
• Payment of 4% of the death benefit amount each month for up to 25 months if the insured cannot perform two or more of six specified activities of daily living or has a severe cognitive impairment
• The option to receive monthly benefits or a one-time lump sum benefit
• No restrictions on how the benefit payment can be used
• No institutionalization requirement to receive benefits. The benefit may pay for proper care in a nursing home, assisted living, or at home, as well as informal care from a spouse, child, or any loved one

The Extension of Benefits Rider extends payment of 4% of the death benefit amount each month for an additional 25 months when the insured selects monthly payments with the Chronic Condition Rider.

The Benefit Restoration Rider restores 100% of the monthly payment for each month the Chronic Condition Rider is paid. The rider ensures that the insured’s beneficiary receives a total death benefit, and there are no restrictions on how it may be used.

Milliman Launches Enhanced Retirement Security Projection Tool

Milliman, Inc. has announced the launch of an enhanced retirement security projection tool available to participants in Milliman-administered retirement plans. The Retirement Income Security Evaluation Score, developed by Milliman, seeks to helps participants understand how well they are prepared for financial risk in retirement.

The RISE Score goes beyond calculating monthly retirement income by projecting financial risks in retirement, such as inflation, longevity, health care, markets, and withdrawal behaviors. While the back-end technology and mathematics are complex, the user experience is simple—participants receive a retirement readiness rating displayed like a credit score on a scale of 350 to 850.

The latest RISE enhancements include projecting total portfolio value at retirement under three different market scenarios, converting portfolio balance at retirement into estimated monthly retirement income, and expanded tips and strategies to help participants improve their scores, including the impact of auto-increase on pre-tax or Roth savings.

 T. Rowe Price Introduces Emergency Savings App

T. Rowe Price has launched Waysaver, a smart savings app that provides a secure and automatic way for employees to create an emergency savings fund at an FDIC-insured bank.

T. Rowe Price designed the app and algorithm, and Galileo Financial Technologies is providing its cloud-based digital platform and program management services to power the program. Interest bearing deposit accounts are provided by The Bancorp Bank, N.A., Member FDIC.

Clients of T. Rowe Price Retirement Plan Services can add Waysaver to their benefits offering this year through an integrated out-of-plan offering. The solution is one of several enhancements the firm has been making to its financial wellness offering and follows the announcement of a student loan debt solution in 2020 and health savings account integration in 2019.