Products January 4, 2012

New York Life Partners with Anova for Benchmarking Service

Consensus is a new benchmarking tool to help retirement plan advisers gauge client satisfaction.
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New York Life Retirement Plan Services, a provider of retirement solutions, is offering a service for retirement plan advisers called Consensus. The service is powered by Anova Consulting Group, a financial services market research and sales training firm.

Consensus will allow retirement plan advisers to evaluate client satisfaction levels and will generate quantitative and qualitative feedback on adviser service delivery. It will also provide segmentation analysis, benchmarking against other advisers, and identification of at-risk and satisfied clients.

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“We want to drive better outcomes for our advisers, sponsors and participants, and we see Consensus as a natural complement to our ongoing focus on client satisfaction,” said Patrick Murphy, managing director of sales at New York Life Retirement Plan Services.

The service asks sponsors to rate their adviser using more than 50 criteria ranging from quality of service, to communication frequency, to their willingness to recommend their adviser to another plan sponsor. The adviser receives a customized report that aggregates their data in perspective of industry standards and provides qualitative feedback, according to Murphy.

Advisers do not need retirement plans on New York Life’s platform in order to participate.

Products January 3, 2012

Great-West Enhances Websites for Sponsors, Advisers and TPAs

Great-West Retirement Services enhanced its websites for plan sponsor clients, advisers and third-party administrator (TPA) partners.   
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The enhancements to the plan sponsor site include:

•  More intuitive, tab-based navigation,

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•  Participant search capabilities on every screen,

•  Daily balance summaries updated after each market close,

•  Expand plan provision data,

•  A repository to store fee disclosure and plan documents,

•  The ability to submit bank account information online, and

•  Improved file upload validation.

The new partner site features include:

•  Easier access to the latest commission and fee-for-service payment information,

•  Multiplan access and search capabilities for users with multiple plans, and

•  Consolidated daily balance summaries for the user’s entire block of business, including total assets updated as of the most recent market close.

Both sites also include a new Resource Center—a dedicated area for the information and reference materials that plan sponsors and partners use the most. Demonstration videos outline the new design features and enhancements to help familiarize plan sponsors and partners with the new sites.

“The new sites are more intuitive, easier to navigate, and simpler to use,” said Charlie Nelson, president of Great-West Retirement Services. “They include features that will help our plan sponsor clients and partners complete many day-to-day tasks more efficiently.” 

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