New York Life Tool Gauges Retirement Readiness

New York Life Retirement Plan Services has released an interactive Retirement Readiness Dashboard to help 401(k) plan sponsors and plan advisers better gauge the effectiveness of their plans.

The dashboard is designed to determine a plan participant’s level of retirement readiness, as well as model plan changes that may increase those levels of readiness. Lynda Abend, chief data officer at New York Life Retirement Plan Services, tells PLANADVISER, “We incorporate defined contribution, defined benefit and Social Security benefits. Benefits are projected to Social Security normal retirement age. Plan features such as managed savings are included in the projections. We assume a fixed investment return. Plan changes are factored in to the projection model to show impact on retirement income.”

In addition, the dashboard shows how prepared participants are for retirement when compared to industry peers and all other New York Life retirement clients, and allows segmentation by participant age, tenure, salary and division. The dashboard also features interactive tools to model how adding features (including automatic enrollment, automatic escalation or changes in corporate match) will affect participant readiness.

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“The interactive tool allows plan sponsors to model the impact of adding auto-enrollment, managed savings and auto-sweep features to a plan,” says the Westwood, Massachusetts-based Abend. “The plan design features are included in the income projections and show the impact on retirement readiness from the current plan design. Through our consulting services, we also provide the cost of such features.”

Since 2012, New York Life has launched a series of dashboards that allow plan sponsors to evaluate core components of their plan including participant behavior and utilization of plan investments, plan enrollment and savings rates by participant demographic, and the success of participant communication efforts.

Patrick Murphy, CEO of New York Life Retirement Plan Services, says that digital tools such as the dashboards enable plan sponsors and advisers to access core plan data and analysis, which in turn allows other consults and service providers to act on the information. “Empowering participants to retire with sufficient assets is likely the most important metric by which a sponsor can judge the plan’s success,” he adds.

The Retirement Readiness Dashboard is only available to clients of New York Life. Plan sponsors should contact their plan adviser to obtain more information regarding the dashboard.

New York Life Retirement Plan Services offers bundled retirement plan solutions and defined contribution investment only products throughout the United States. More information about the firm can be found athttp://www.nylinvestments.com/retirement.

Filthy Forks, Wisecracking Waiters Among Restaurant Diners’ Complaints

What an amazing number of things can go wrong when you set out to simply enjoy a meal in a restaurant. Here’s a roundup of what diners dislike most.

Top diner gripes are dirty tables, utensils or restrooms, garnering even more complaints than food, according to a survey by the National Research Center of Consumer Reports.

Men and women agree equally on the major complaints. Women tend to be slightly more upset about dirty or ill-equipped restrooms than men.

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Server problems also figured strongly in diner unhappiness. Almost three-quarters of respondents (72%) cited impolite or condescending servers, followed by servers’ sloppy appearance or hygiene (67%) and server pressure in the diner to finish or leave (61%).

Other service complaints included servers removing food or beverages before the diner finished (59%), slow service (51%), not bringing water until asked (27%), calling the diner pet names such as “honey” or “dear” (24%) or becoming confused over which diner gets which meal (17%).

Some people want to know what’s in that Blooming Onion; others not so much. But the two groups were similar in their percentage, with a small percentage (14%) pointing out when not enough nutritional information is given, and a similar number (16%) feeling that so much nutritional information is given that it’s a turn-of to eating.

In descending order of irritation, other complaints are:

 

  • Meals or beverages served at incorrect temperatures (66%);
  • Meals not what was ordered (62%);
  • Food doesn’t look or taste as described on the menu (54%);
  • Tips of 18% or more automatically added to check; table not ready more than 15 minutes past reservation time (tied at 50%);
  • Inaccurate calculation on check (48%);
  • Tables that are too close together (39%);
  • Loud or distracting diners at other tables; poorly situated table near a door or the kitchen, for example (both 38%); and
  • Nearby diners talking or texting on cell phones (30%).

 

The National Research Center of Consumer Reports surveyed 1,003 adults in March for its findings. 

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