New T. Rowe Price/FIS Arrangement to Accelerate Recordkeeping Enhancements

T. Rowe Price Group Inc. has announced plans to transform its full-service retirement recordkeeping business by expanding its 30-year relationship with FIS, a financial technology provider.

FIS serves some of the industry’s largest recordkeepers and provides the technology platform for 50 million participants and more than $3 trillion in assets.

For T. Rowe Price, FIS will assume responsibility for managing retirement technology development and core operations. As a result, about 800 T. Rowe Price operations and technology associates are being offered the same roles with FIS that they have today, with the transition effective August 1. The transitioning associates will remain in their current facilities in Owings Mills, Maryland, and Colorado Springs, Colorado, and continue to serve the T. Rowe Price account and clients.

T. Rowe Price will maintain its responsibilities for delivering investment management, high-touch client service and personalized participant experiences. Sponsors will continue to be served by their same client service teams at T. Rowe Price, and T. Rowe Price will retain accountability for all recordkeeping services.

The firms say leveraging FIS’ expertise in fintech and service delivery, along with its significant investments in its retirement business, will enable T. Rowe Price to accelerate the pace of enhancements it delivers to clients, including recordkeeping modernization; additional retirement income experiences; new financial wellness and digital payment capabilities; and incorporation of the latest in artificial intelligence (AI), automation and robotics technology. These enhancements will be delivered while ensuring there is no disruption to plan sponsors or participants. Because T. Rowe Price already uses FIS’ recordkeeping platform, there will be no conversion or transition for any clients.

Bill Stromberg, chief executive officer of T. Rowe Price, says that with the retirement plan recordkeeping business being dynamic and highly competitive, and following an extensive strategic review of the business, the company concluded that expanding its partnership with FIS would best accelerate the transformation of the business and support scalable growth for the long term.

“We believe we are at a point where the industry is ripe for significant change in how retirement offerings are delivered. Expanding our partnership with FIS will keep us ahead of new trends and position T. Rowe Price for ongoing industry leadership, enabling us to influence fintech development and inform a new way of doing business that has the potential to become a standard for the industry over the next 20 years,” says Dee Sawyer, head of individual investors and retirement plan services at T. Rowe Price.

“The retirement industry demands state-of-the-art solutions in response to evolving plan sponsor, adviser and participant expectations,” says Kevin Collins, head of retirement plan services at T. Rowe Price. “By aligning our investment management capabilities and well-regarded high-touch service with their cutting-edge fintech and retirement operations, we get the best of both worlds. This will accelerate our delivery of innovative solutions and compelling digital experiences designed to span employee needs, spur participants to act and maximize value for plan sponsors.”