Product & Service Launches – 11/16/23

Employee Fiduciary Launches a Future Value of 401(k) Fees Calculator

Employee Fiduciary, LLC, a leading provider of 401(k) recordkeeping and third-party administration services, has launched a new calculator to illustrate the impact 401(k) fees can have on savings over time.

The tool is designed to show retirement savers how much they can increase their long-term savings for retirement by lowering their 401(k) fees. It includes an interface where participants can adjust and customize their current age, retirement age, current account balance, annual contributions, and rate of return.

“Few savers appreciate the cumulative effect of 401(k) fees in our experience. When a 401(k) account pays fees, the saver won’t just miss their principal in retirement,” Eric Droblyen, Employee Fiduciary’s president and CEO, said in a statement. “They’ll also miss the compound interest the payments would have earned had their amount remained invested instead. Our calculator demonstrates the significance of these losses. We think this information will motivate savers to lower their amount today.”

The calculator includes a bar chart that displays projected balances at four different annual fee rates: 0.00%, 0.25%, 0.50%, and 1.00%, as well as a breakdown showing the potential retirement balance for each fee scenario, with color coordination to match the bar chart for ease of understanding.

Businessolver Enhances MyChoice Accounts HSA Investment Platform

Businessolver, a provider of benefits technology and services through its proprietary platform, Benefitsolver, has partnered with DriveWealth and Sentinel Group to expand its healthcare account offerings to include a health savings account investment management tool.

Through the platform, participants can manage their HSA claims and investments, including investing in exchange-traded funds, in the same place they enroll in and manage their entire health and welfare benefits package.

“This partnership opens up a lot of opportunities for our clients and their members to unlock the full power of their HSAs,” Rae Shanahan, chief strategy officer at Businessolver, said in a statement. “Providing members with the opportunity to invest in exchange-traded funds expands the future of healthcare spending and provides more flexibility to help lower overall investment costs.”

Registered investment adviser Sentinel Group is monitoring the fund line-up, and DriveWealth is providing the API-driven technology.

BenchMine Launches CY 2022 401(k) Benchmarking Engine with New Tools

BenchMine, a provider of comparative analytics for retirement plans, has released its second year of fully searchable performance insights for U.S. retirement plans. Continuing with free and open access, BenchMine has included 58,912 401(k) plans, using the first major data release on CY 2022 from the U.S. Department of Labor.

BenchMine enables users to analyze, compare, and discover plans and performance outcomes. Plan fiduciaries can use BenchMine to evaluate plans across industry, geographic region, size, or other points of comparison.

Using proprietary algorithms of automated knowledge discovery and natural language generation, BenchMine offers insights for individual plans or groups, and shows where improvements might be made.

“With the newest data, an expanded scope, and UI improvements, we offer all current or soon-to-be stakeholders of employer 401(k) plans an easy way to intelligently assess the dynamic 401(k) landscape and make informed decisions,” Raul Valdes-Perez, co-founder and CEO of OnlyBoth Inc. which powers BenchMine, said in a statement.

Nationwide Launches New Annuity Riders

Nationwide announced updates to the Nationwide Lifetime Income Rider+ suite, which are designed for guaranteed lifetime income in retirement, in part due to higher interest rates.

Nationwide’s updates to the L.inc+ suite includes the launch of Nationwide L.inc+ Empire and L.inc+ Empire Advisory in New York, as well as an increase to withdrawal rates for L.inc+ Core, L.inc+ Accelerated and L.inc+ Max.

Updates also include the addition of L.inc+ Core Advisory and L.inc+ Accelerated Advisory to the Nationwide Advisory Retirement Income Annuity. According to the firm, these changes provide all advisers, whether commission or fee-based, the same L.inc+ options for their clients.

“One of the upsides of rising interest rates is that they allow us to produce better consumer value on almost all types of annuities – and it’s never been better for lifetime income on variable annuities,” Mike Morrone, vice president of Nationwide Annuity business development, said in a statement. “For investors who can’t afford to hope for the best in an uncertain future, annuities paired with riders that offer guaranteed income can be a great solution to help them protect their financial future.”