Products March 9, 2010

BrightScope, Acceleration Retirement Team on Prospecting Solution

March 9, 2010 (PLANSPONSOR.com) – A new partnership claims to offer retirement plan advisers a new way to prospect and acquire plan sponsor clients.
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Retirement plan rating service BrightScope has announced a strategic partnership with Acceleration Retirement, a provider of practice management, marketing, and lead generation services for advisors, to create what the firms called “the most complete end-to-end prospecting and client acquisition solution for retirement plan advisors ever assembled”.     

According to a press release, adviser will gain access to BrightScope’s data and analytics, benchmarking tools, and custom reporting, along with Acceleration Retirement’s marketing, lead generation, and practice management expertise.

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“Top advisors are already using our Advisor Central product to increase their win rates, shorten their sales cycles, and more efficiently identify and then prospect for new business,” said Mike Alfred, CEO of BrightScope, in the release. “This partnership with Acceleration takes our industry leading capabilities to the next level and ensures that the forward-looking advisors that work with us will be huge winners in the coming years.”

More information about BrightScope is available at http://www.BrightScope.com, and about Acceleration Retirement at http://www.accelerationretirement.com.

Benefits March 9, 2010

Analysis Shows How Using Home Equity Can Help in Retirement

March 9, 2010 (PLANSPONSOR.com) – Americans' reluctance to use home equity to fund retirement could result in more not being able to maintain their standard of living in retirement.
Reported by

The latest analysis of the National Retirement Risk Index (NRRI), released by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College and underwritten by Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company, examines how not taking full advantage of housing equity affects the share of U.S. households ‘at risk.’ The result is a 10-percentage-point rise in the Index, a finding that 61% of households would not be able to maintain their standard of living in retirement.

The NRRI uses very conservative assumptions in its baseline scenario, including that consumers access their home equity through a reverse mortgage and invest the proceeds in an inflation-indexed annuity to help generate retirement income. The CRR said it performed its analysis realizing that very few people actually do that.

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The analysis found the effect of not using home equity is greater than the effect the recession had on the Index, which caused a 7-percentage-point rise in the Index (see Index Finds More not Prepared for Retirement).

The CRR’s findings are here.

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