Resolved: Promote Financial Ed

Nearly half, 48%, of workers responding to the 2018 PLANSPONSOR Participant Survey said personal financial education is either very important (23%) or important (25%) to them.

Maybe they work for the 47% of employers that offer some sort of financial education—a statistic from the 2017 PLANSPONSOR Plan Benchmarking Report—or maybe not. Either way, 53% of employers have yet to add this employee benefit—something they might keep in mind for next year. 

As we come to the close of 2018, it is clear that financial wellness has become quite the industry buzzword, though exactly what it means is open to interpretation. As a start, advisers might work with plan sponsors to ensure they are—at a minimum—providing access to holistic financial education for participants, even if these clients are not yet sold on the benefit of a large financial wellness program or platform.

Employers that do offer financial education address a wide range of topics. The most common is saving and budgeting (44%), followed by investing basics (36%), retirement health care costs/savings options (26%), Social Security withdrawal options/strategies (20%), credit and/or debt management (18%) and college savings (16%).

As for how they would like to receive education, participants named a wide range of methods, the Participant Survey found. First was meeting one-on-one with a financial adviser for 30 minutes, cited by 29%; next was a periodic emailed newsletter, cited by 22%.

Our findings on employee interest were echoed by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans’ “Financial Education for Today’s Workforce: 2018 Survey Results.” Over two in five employers reported seeing an increased demand for financial education among workers in the past two years.