Retirement Industry People Moves

CalPERS names Teykaerts executive director; SageView hires Sarah Parker as plan consultant; SWBC Retirement brings on new investment adviser; and more.

California State Treasurer Ma Appoints Teykaerts ED for CalSavers 


California State Treasurer Fiona Ma has appointed David Teykaerts as the executive director of the CalSavers Retirement Savings Board, California’s retirement savings program with the goal of ensuring residents have access to a workplace retirement account, according to an announcement.

Teykaerts will replace Katie Selenski, who was the program’s first executive director and led the program’s launch and implementation. After leaving CalSavers in April, Selenski was named a senior adviser for the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association on Thursday.

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Katie Selenski

Teykaerts most recently served as interim chief of stakeholder relations at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the nation’s largest pension fund. In that role, he led outreach and communications to the pension fund’s stakeholder groups and advised executive leadership on investment, retirement and health care policy.

Teykaerts also oversaw diversity, equity and inclusion training; Public Records Act requests; and events and major conferences at CalPERS, according to the state treasurer’s office. The department stressed that in 10 years with CalPERS, Teykaerts worked with a wide variety of stakeholders, including elected officials, professional management representing local governments, labor leaders, school districts, retiree coalitions and private sector leaders.

CalSavers has seen 89.1% of employers register for the savings program it implemented in 2019, with 434,918 funded accounts and $594.6 million in assets under management, according to the announcement.

Former executive director Selenski will report to DCIIA president and CEO Lew Minsky, the association wrote in an announcement. Selenski was hired for her many years of experience in the retirement savings industry, particularly her leadership in launching CalSavers, according to the announcement.

 

SageView Hires Sarah Parker as Retirement Plan Consultant

Sarah Parker

SageView Advisory Group has hired Sarah Parker as a retirement plan consultant to expand its Midwest footprint.

Parker joins the firm with more than 15 years of experience working with ERISA and non-ERISA retirement plans, including overseeing a $10 billion defined contribution practice, according to an announcement. She also brings expertise in ESG implementation, target-date funds, vendor selection and oversight, fee benchmarking, managed accounts and financial wellness solutions.

Parker will provide investment oversight and guidance for both not-for-profit and for-profit clients, according to SageView.

“We are thrilled to have Sarah join the SageView team given her depth of experience as a fiduciary with public, private, and defined benefit retirement plans,” Jon Upham, SageView’s president and head of institutional retirement, said in a statement. “We know she will help our clients navigate the industry’s complexities, so their plan participants have peace of mind.”

Parker joins Sageview from a senior consultant role for financial advisory Clearstead, and before that she was an institutional investment analyst for Charles Schwab Corp..

Murray Named Investment Adviser for SWBC Retirement

 

Mark Murray

Mark Murray, formerly of Creative Planning, has joined SWBC Retirement Plan Services in the role of investment adviser, according to a spokesperson.

 

Murray will work to ease the lives of plan sponsors by bringing SWBC’s structure, discipline and documentation approach to midsize and large retirement plans, the spokesperson wrote via email. Murray will also focus on improving participants’ outcomes through targeted education.

 

Prior to a financial wellness consulting role at Creative Planning, Murray was director of retirement education and planning services at Transamerica Corp. for about 18 years and helped create a participant education division, working to improve participant outcomes and plan metrics.

 

American Century Promotes Nelligan to Head of Financial Institutions

 

Michael Nelligan

Asset manager American Century Investments promoted Michael Nelligan to head of financial institutions to lead a team of strategic relationship managers focused on the firm’s financial institution clients in both insurance and retirement, according to a spokesperson.

Nelligan was promoted to the role from strategic relationship manager and will report to Rick Luchinsky and Brian Schappert, co-heads of U.S. intermediary distribution, the spokesperson wrote via email.
 
 

Nelligan was hired at American Century in 2019.
 

Miracle Mile Taps Nate Angelo to Head Wealth Management 

 

Nate Angelo

Miracle Mile Advisors, a wealth manager focused on high-net-worth clients, has appointed Nate Angelo as head of wealth management.

In this newly created role, Angelo will work with the firm’s senior leaders to develop, refine and execute market and sales strategies, onboarding processes, financial planning framework and holistic service models, according to an announcement.

Angelo joins the firm after holding senior leadership roles at RBC Wealth Management, most recently as the director of its Pacific Northwest complex. In that role, he grew the firm’s regional revenues by more than 60% through adviser recruiting, coaching and support, according to the announcement.

“Thanks to the breadth of our services and unique culture, our firm is well-positioned to support accomplished financial professionals,” CEO Bruce Milam said in a statement. “Nate, who has a well-deserved reputation for getting results, is just the person to oversee our robust growth strategy. I’m delighted to welcome him to the team.”

Miracle Mile makes the announcement after appointing Milam as chief executive officer in June. Last year, the firm received a growth investment from Corsair Capital and announced a merger with Karp Capital Management, bringing total client assets to $4.7 billion.

How Website Design, Higher Default Rates Can Improve Participant Engagement

Reframing wording for employee contributions and presenting higher default savings options are effective strategies, according to Voya research.

In order to drive more participant engagement with their retirement plans and more overall participation, behavioral finance experts at Voya Financial say enhancing the design of an enrollment website and presenting higher default contribution rates up front are digital strategies that plan sponsors and recordkeepers should consider implementing.  

Revamping an enrollment website does not necessarily require adding new bells and whistles, but simply reframing language and reordering default rate options could prompt participants to save more than they ordinarily would, according to Tom Armstrong, Voya’s head of customer analysis and insight, as well as the head of the Voya Behavioral Finance Institute for Innovation. 

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Armstrong says reframing contribution rate wording to “pennies per dollar” is something that makes more sense to people, as opposed to suggesting they contribute a certain percentage of their pay. The pennies-per-dollar strategy is particularly effective for low-to-moderate-income workers, Armstrong says. 

In a study Voya conducted in 2021, for example, a randomized group of 2,225 participants across 86 employers were surveyed, with participants assigned either a pennies or a percent treatment for making retirement savings elections. For those who submitted a savings rate, the “pennies” wording had a positive impact on savings rates and also reduced gaps between participants with disparate incomes.  

The effects were largest for those in the lowest salary tercile (annual income less than $46,000), as they elevated their savings rates to approximately 8.03% from a control savings rate of 6.88%.  

“We found that those who were earning less money [and] had lower financial literacy or financial wellness tended to then save more, because we were engaging them in terms that they were more familiar with,” Armstrong says. 

Presenting Higher Default Rates 

Armstrong adds that increasing default rates presented in online enrollment, such as doubling and tripling the most-suggested default savings rate of 3%, can drive participation and savings rates significantly. 

“Let’s say we put a 7% savings rate in front of the user, when maybe the default used to be 5 or 6%,” Armstrong says. “We found that when we studied longer-term savings behaviors, that [a] 1- or 2- [percentage-point]-higher nudge would help them save more on a more sustainable basis.” 

Voya found that suggesting these higher savings rates did not backfire on the participant, nor did they dissuade them from saving. 

In an experiment that involved raising the default automatic enrollment rates for 10,000 employees on their workplace retirement plan enrollment website, Voya found that while setting the rate at 11% did slightly increase the percentage of employees opting not to participate, display rates between 7% and 10% did not.  

Voya also experimented with presenting default escalators of either 1% or 2% per year to different populations. Armstrong says the firm found that the rate of adoption was nearly identical, whether a user was presented with the 1% or 2% option. 

“We know that tenure of employees is going down,” Armstrong says. “So if a new hire comes into an organization and we can get them to save a good amount up front—and then sign up for these rate escalation features or have the plan adopt the rate escalation feature at 2% instead of 1%—if the [employee] is only with that employer for two or three years, they have a higher likelihood of getting up to the 10% to 15% range that we generally believe most employees need to be saving.”  

Visual Design Drives Engagement 

Language, color, order and placement of information on an enrollment website are all elements that can either increase engagement or drive people away, according to Armstrong.  

For example, presenting an “opt out” button in the color red could subconsciously warn an employee that opting out may be an unwise decision for future retirement savings. 

Voya also found that changing opt-out wording to “I do not wish to save for retirement” could cause people to re-evaluate their decision.  

“Even if they didn’t accept the employer default, we could steer [the employee] to a place where they can just save a little bit and eventually get them on a path to using re-escalation techniques,” Armstrong says. 

Order also matters, and Armstrong says placing a default rate option on the left side of the screen tended to get more click rates than the same one on the far right, as English speakers tend to read from left to right. Placing a more optimal default rate on the left side of the screen could potentially drive more engagement, Armstrong explains. 

He says these tools are not a way to trick people, but ways to help employees make critical choices about their financial future at a time when these decisions are made in an increasingly digital space. 

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