Client Service March 13, 2017

Recordkeepers Focused on Improving Participant Financial Wellness

Focusing on financial wellness education is one of the past year’s most prominent trends in the digital retirement space, with 75% of RPM firms adding new financial wellness content to their participant websites, Corporate Insight found.
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The majority of the recordkeepers within Corporate Insight’s Retirement Plan Monitor (RPM) coverage group recognize the importance of providing holistic financial wellness education: 80% provide enough content to warrant coverage in its report, which identifies 38 financial wellness topics.

Focusing on financial wellness education is one of the past year’s most prominent trends in the digital retirement space, with 75% of RPM firms adding new financial wellness content to their participant websites and 40% either completely overhauling or making significant enhancements to existing content.

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Firms employ a variety of techniques to create more engaging educational content. The use of narratives in content can help make the information more relatable to participants as opposed to simply providing dry information on the topic at hand, Corporate Insight says. Approximately 56% of firms covered in the report frame at least some of their financial wellness educational content as narratives. Coverage group firms also provide resources that encourage interactivity, such as worksheets, quizzes, lessons, tutorials and games. Three-quarters of firms provide at least one interactive financial-wellness-themed quiz on the participant site, 56% provide worksheets or checklists, and half feature curriculum-based lessons or tutorials.

Ten of the 16 firms covered in the report (63%) provide participant site educational materials that cover at least half of the 38 topics identified. Every firm offers content that focuses on general investing tips or strategies and Social Security. Three-fourths of the firms provide materials on asset classes, estate planning, managing debt, college savings/debt and savings strategies/priorities. At least half of firms cover 16 additional financial wellness-related topics, including creating a budget (69%), health care costs (63%), life insurance (63%), taxes (56%) and emotional investing (50%). Fewer than half of the group provides content on the following noteworthy topics: long-term care insurance (44%), identity theft (44%), women and finances/investing (38%) and caring for aging relatives (31%).

NEXT: Easy access

Coverage group firms’ participant websites generally provide easy access to financial wellness educational content. Twelve firms (75%) employ an education center that centrally houses the majority of available content, a best practice that expedites navigation to specific resources. Of the 12 firms that provide an education center, seven (58%) offer access to it from a dedicated main menu tab and four (33%) from a subtab or flyout menu link. Many of these firms also implement a variety of additional features that further enhance what Corporate Insight calls the findability of specific content, such as organizing resources by topic (92%), allowing users to filter materials by topic (42%) or medium (25%), and organizing content by reader acumen level (17%).

Firms also employ a number of features to enhance the findability of resources beyond housing them in a centralized education center. Approximately 88% provide homepage quick links to educational content, and 62% offer links to related content on various participant site pages, such as transactional screens and account data pages. Firms also provide links on educational resources that lead users to related educational content (75%), tools or calculators (62%) or transactions and/or account data pages (13%).

In addition to ensuring participants can locate the financial wellness content on the participant site, multiple leading recordkeepers go one step further to promote select content. Six firms (38%) highlight featured content on the participant site through dedicated sections on the homepage or within the centralized education center.

A synopsis of the report may be found here.
Products March 13, 2017

Franklin Templeton 529 Tool Leverages Crowd Funding

The program is designed to help savers utilize help from family and friends to reach 529 plan goals. 
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Franklin Templeton Investments announced the launch of its new crowdfunding tool “Spryng,” designed for use by NJBEST and Franklin Templeton 529 College Savings Plan account holders.

Pronounced “spring,” the new tool was developed to “harness the power of crowdfunding and social media, by creating a secure and convenient method to engage family and friends in saving for future higher education expenses.”

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“When saving for college, it’s important to start early, invest regularly and ask family and friends for help,” explains Roger Michaud, director of college savings for Franklin Templeton Investments. “Spryng helps put those tenets to work by creating a seamless and secure environment where family and friends can contribute to a child’s or family member’s college education.”

Within the Spryng system, the account creates a customizable profile, featuring a personal message and information on savings goals. Once the profile is established, Spryng generates a secure URL that can be emailed or shared with potential gift givers via various social media platforms. When gift givers access the gifting profile, they can choose an amount to contribute, with a minimum of $10 and a maximum  of $2,500.

Payments are validated in real time, the firm says, and the system automatically emails a transaction confirmation to the gift giver with a thank you message from the account owner.

More information is available here. 

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