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Financially Stressed Employees Turning to Employers for Help

Employees who are barely keeping up with their immediate financial needs and cannot save for retirement are increasingly looking for help from their employers, according to a new white paper from Questis.

The New Retirement Narrative—And What Plan Advisors Need To Know” finds that employers, in response, are increasingly providing financial wellness resources as part of their benefits packages, especially when considering the cost of lost productivity, absenteeism and turnover.

The paper – which explores the changing landscape of retirement and what it means for plan advisors and participants – looks at the differences working longer can make, the role of HSAs, challenges women face and how technology can be a differentiator for advisors.

“Based on current trends, Americans will be confronting rates of elder poverty in the not-too-distant future that haven’t been seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s,” says Martha Menard, PhD, senior researcher at Questis and author of the white paper. In response to changing concepts about what retirement means and could look like in the future, Menard suggests that “retirement planning is changing too.”

Among other things, she notes that advisors are reintegrating the whole person and their financial goals into the retirement planning process and personalized advice is becoming the new norm.

“Rather than accumulating an arbitrary sum for retirement and spending it down, more people want to be able to meet their financial goals at every stage of life, including retirement,” she explains. As a result, she suggests that goal-based planning is assuming increased importance for every generation, as is planning for income replacement during retirement.

Menard further emphasizes that firms looking to grow their book of business are using technology to scale their ability to serve more clients without adding staff. Moreover, she suggests that technology also allows for a more personalized experience, which is key to increasing plan participant engagement. “Financial wellness technology can scale advisor efficiency and reach with configurable self-service portals, simple and multi-channel advisor-plan participant communication, calculators, and content,” Menard notes.

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