The ability to benchmark against industry standards and similar retirement plans has been significantly expanded with the advent of artificial intelligence (AI).
San Francisco-based Newfront Retirement Services recently released its “benchmarking on steroids” tool and now BenchMine, a “comparative analytics” firm, released its second year of searchable performance data for U.S. retirement plans which, according to the company, lets users uncover valuable, detailed, perfect-English comparisons of key plan data.
The free and open access platform has included 58,912 401(k) plans, using the first major data release on CY 2022 from the U.S. Department of Labor.
“BenchMine enables users to analyze, compare, and discover plans and performance outcomes to an unprecedented level,” the company said. “No specialized knowledge is required—anyone can use BenchMine to evaluate plans across industry, geographic region, size, or other points of comparison. Using proprietary algorithms of automated knowledge discovery and natural language generation, BenchMine uncovers noteworthy positive insights for individual plans or groups, surfaces where improvements could be made, and delivers the results in a highly readable, persuasive format with rich supporting context.
It includes performance insights for different-sized 401(k) plans, including those with less than $1 million in assets that filed a financial Schedule H. Also, by examining each plan’s yield, users can make fair performance comparisons between any plans, regardless of asset size.
Year-over-year performance comparisons of plans for 2022, 2021 and 2020 can be compared on the BenchMine website, which creates “a more complete performance picture, and supplementing a tumultuous 2022 year with prior context.”
"With the newest data, an expanded scope, and UI improvements, we offer all current or soon-to-be stakeholders of employer 401(k) plans an easy way to intelligently assess the dynamic 401(k) landscape and make informed decisions,” Raul Valdes-Perez, co-founder and CEO of parent company OnlyBoth Inc., said in a statement.
