John
Hancock Retirement Plan Services (JHRPS) introduced a new plan review solution
that helps advisers easily evaluate the overall health of a client’s retirement
plan and demonstrate their value to plan sponsors and participants.
Available
on the John Hancock adviser website, the fully customized Plan Review supports
onsite and remote meeting discussions to meet the adviser’s own unique service
model. With Plan Review, advisers can easily analyze a broad range of plan and
participant issues. Plan Review capabilities include highlighting
under-utilized services and using demographics to target education
opportunities on topics such as retirement readiness, diversification, and risk
tolerance.
“With our new
Plan Review, we’ve made it easy for the adviser to shine in plan review
meetings,” says Andrew Ross, senior vice president, marketing and product development. “This new solution provides advisers with plan and
participant data and trends to help them identify opportunities as well as
successes.”
The traditional model of full
retirement at a fixed date is on the wane, and this may affect
employers’ ability to manage human capital.
Willis Towers Watson
surveyed 4,049 retirees ages 65 or older and found that for most people,
the decision to retire was prompted by both personal and professional
circumstances. Personal circumstances were the top retirement drivers.
Almost two in three retirees (64%) reported that personal
circumstances—ranging from health issues to a desire for more leisure
time—were quite or extremely important to their retirement decision.
Employer
incentives were the second most important influence on retirement. More
than half (56%) of retirees cited employer retirement plans and other
employer incentives as key factors in their decision to retire.
Twenty-three percent gave reasons related to their working environment,
and the majority of those said that feeling disengaged from their
employer, their job or both played a pivotal role in their retirement
decision.
The survey respondents retired across almost 35
years—from the 1980s through 2014—allowing for an analysis of changing
retirement motives. Older retirees gave different reasons for retiring
than younger retirees. A substantially larger proportion (41%) of those
who retired in the 1980s cited employer programs (retirement benefits
and other incentives) as a major motive to retire, compared with those
who retired more recently (27%).
Meanwhile, personal reasons,
eligibility for government programs and workplace factors—most often
disengagement—have gained greater influence.
NEXT: Feelings about retirement
Nearly one in 10 retirees regretted their decision to retire, and 44%
of those with regrets said they would like to return to work. Regret
was less common for those who retired for personal reasons or in
response to employer incentives, but the incidence rises to 17% among
those who retired because of job dissatisfaction.
Including
retirees who felt highly disengaged at work and/or not valued by their
employer pushes the percentage with regrets to almost 20%. This is
likely to become more problematic in the future, as more employees
continue working because they can’t afford to retire, despite feeling
disappointed and less engaged with their jobs, according to Willis
Towers Watson.
The overwhelming majority of retirees reported
having more leisure time: 55% spent a lot more time pursuing other
activities, and 43% spent more time with family and friends. However,
nearly one in 10 retirees cited financial concerns and roughly one in
eight believed they had retired too soon. Eight percent of retirees felt
shocked by retirement or had trouble with the lack of routine or other
adjustment difficulties.
Retirees’ experiences were strongly
influenced by their reasons for retiring. Those who retired of their own
volition had fewer negative experiences. Those who retired because of
dissatisfaction with their workplace had more negative experiences: 31%
felt they had retired too soon, 24% had difficulty adjusting and 23%
worried about whether they could afford retirement.
As more
people delay retirement, the work environment is assuming a larger role
in retirement decisions, with workers’ feelings about their jobs
becoming increasingly instrumental. Willis Towers Watson concludes this
is signaling that changing the work environment could open up
alternative ways for employers to influence employees’ retirement
timing, counterbalancing the receding impact of direct employer
incentives.
More information about the survey findings is here.