Products March 13, 2017

Wells Fargo Enhances Online Tools for 401(k) Participants

The firm has rolled out three new features designed to encourage participants to visualize their retirement readiness goals and take action. 
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To help its 401(k) participants boost their savings and manage their accounts, Wells Fargo Institutional Retirement & Trust has added three new features to its participant website for tablet and desktop users. 

A new How do I compare? dashboard tool presents investors with visuals illustrating the average account balance and saving deferral rates of people in their age group and income levels who are on track to replace at least 80% of their income in retirement. Wells Fargo points to research that indicates that these figures can put participants in a competitive mode and encourage positive behavior by motivating people to save more.

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Another addition to the dashboard is the Retirement Income Estimator, which helps participants visualize how close they are to replacing at least 80% of income in retirement. The tool also allows users to model different contribution amounts to see how small changes can impact overall retirement income by using an interactive slider bar with a corresponding graph. The contribution rate slider also highlights next best step recommendations for increasing contributions by increments of 1%, up to the amount needed to take full advantage of the company match if offered. 

The new Manage My Investments page allows users to update investment elections. The page also offers interactive features and visuals to measure the potential impact a particular investment change would have on overall assets. This feature is also accessible via smart phones.

In addition, the firm is enhancing components of its mobile app. If applicable, participants will now be able to sign up for, or change their automatic rebalance settings; choose to invest exclusively in a portfolio of pre-selected investments based on their risk tolerance; or choose to invest exclusively in a diversified investment option based on their date of birth and estimated retirement age. 

These additions to Wells Fargo’s 401(k) management services are examples of an industry trend seeing recordkeepers amping up financial wellness resources. In fact, Wells Fargo’s Financial Health site now offers participants in the accounts it services access to One Little Thing, a dashboard component under the “Simple steps to better financial health” box. It is designed to provide simple tips for better budgeting, debt management, emergency savings building, and student loan repayment.  

“We continue to invest in new digital options for the more than 3 million participants in plans we manage, always with the goal of making it easier to increase retirement savings and drive better outcomes,” says Joe Ready, director of Wells Fargo Institutional Retirement and Trust. “Providing a participant with information about peers who are better prepared for retirement may spark ideas for changes they can make to increase their retirement savings trajectory. Simplifying the investment options and illustrating them visually can help people quickly manage their investments digitally in one space.”

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.

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