Products May 11, 2018

VALIC, RetireUp Offer Retirement Plan Participant Planning Tool for Advisers

Retirement Pathfinder is dynamic, allowing for ad-hoc changes and a host of different scenarios.

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VALIC, an AIG company, and RetireUp have partnered to create Retirement Pathfinder, a tool that VALIC’s advisers can use to show various investment scenarios to participants. VALIC is a retirement plan provider for health care, K-12, higher education, government and other not-for-profit organizations, and RetireUp is a provider of retirement planning software for financial advisers.

Retirement Pathfinder is delivered through a web-based portal that breaks down complex financial matters through informative graphics, educational materials and more. Rather than issue a questionnaire to participants to understand their risk tolerance and retirement goals, Retirement Pathfinder is dynamic, allowing for ad-hoc changes and a host of different scenarios. It can determine a participant’s lifestyle needs, discretionary lifestyle needs and the remaining income gap. The program explains a variety of investment options, including annuities, in a clear, concise way.

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“For 60 years, we have focused on the success of our clients, and we are always looking for opportunities to better serve them,” says Rob Scheinerman, president, group retirement, at AIG Life & Retirement. “That’s why we partnered with RetireUp to introduce Retirement Pathfinder. What’s especially unique about Retirement Pathfinder is that it allows a client to sit down with an adviser and map out the future they envision.”
Data & Research May 11, 2018

Knowledge of Retirement Plan Fees Lacking by Small Businesses

Only 19% of the small to mid-size business leaders said they are “very familiar” with their retirement plan fees, while 34% said they are “not at all familiar” with those fees.

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Many small business owners and managers expressed limited knowledge about how much they or their employees pay in fees to their retirement plans, according to a survey conducted by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

Only 19% of the small to mid-size business leaders said they are “very familiar” with their retirement plan fees, while 34% said they are “not at all familiar” with those fees. Forty-seven percent indicated they are “somewhat familiar” with their retirement plan fees.

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Only 49% said they had read their fee disclosure in the prior year and had understood it; 44% said they had not read it; and 7% said they had read the disclosure but did not understand it. But decision-makers were divided over the benefit of more information. About half said additional information would be “somewhat” (35%) or “very” useful (14%), while a nearly equal share said this would be “not at all” (26%) or “not too” useful (24%).

Analysis of survey findings shows that those who said that they had read but did not understand plan disclosures were more than three times as likely as other business leaders to say that additional information would be “very useful.” Also, an examination of which employers read disclosures—regardless of their understanding—showed that those with fewer employees were less likely to have done so.

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