John Hancock Makes Move to Levelize Fees

John Hancock Retirement Plan Services (JHRPS) is entering into a new strategic, multi-phased development agreement with Vertical Management Systems (VMS) of Pasadena, California.

The goal of the strategic partnership is to leverage VMS’s trust accounting and trading systems expertise, applying their solutions and technology to bring participant revenue levelization for a variety of investment vehicles—mutual funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), collective investment trusts (CITs)—as a future option on the John Hancock’s Total Retirement Solutions (TRS) recordkeeping platform. The TRS platform  was recently acquired by John Hancock with its purchase of The New York Life Retirement Plan Services business.

The result of a strategic platform review undertaken with the acquisition, this multi-year development agreement is expected to bring new capabilities and options to clients of John Hancock’s Total Retirement Solutions business, including participant revenue levelization to multiple investment vehicles. Additionally, the agreement extends and reinforces the organization’s partnership with VMS as they continue to support TRS trust and trading sub systems.

As part of this agreement, resources currently deployed on the development of the nascent recordkeeping system underlying the JH Enterprise, open architecture 401(k) solution will be redeployed to the new project, with the recordkeeping system that currently supports the TRS platform, also being adopted as the foundation for JH Enterprise. John Hancock will work closely with the handful of existing JH Enterprise clients to ensure a smooth and beneficial transition to this new system.

John Hancock Retirement Plan Services is a retirement plan provider to more than 55,000 businesses, covering more than 2.6 million individuals.