Products March 28, 2017

Empower and Optum Partner to Integrate Retirement and Health Savings

The Empower Health Savings Account will provide plan participants access to a financial-planning solution that integrates retirement savings with health care savings, helping them prepare for health care expenses in retirement.
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Empower Retirement and health services provider Optum launched a health savings account (HSA) for retirement plan participants—The Empower Health Savings Account.

Available this summer to employers, the Empower Health Savings Account will provide plan participants access to an online, seamless financial-planning solution that integrates retirement savings with health care savings, helping them prepare for health care expenses in retirement. The Empower-Optum tool will provide access to investment advice and retirement planning resources that bring together an individual’s health and retirement portfolio to help them understand their options to cover health care costs and maximize their savings across tax-advantaged programs.

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The Empower HSA plan will enable participants to see and understand the gaps in their retirement plan and develop a strategy to take action, including health plan selection and enrollment, retirement plan management, inclusion of wellness programs and health savings account management. Optum and Empower’s technology and planning tools integrate the HSA and the retirement plans to provide analysis and forecasting of the participant’s retirement preparedness.

“Health care in retirement can be a considerable expense and one that makes retirement planning more challenging. The Empower Health Savings Account can help people prepare for that challenge,” says Edmund F. Murphy III, president of Empower Retirement.

Through the Empower HSA, employers will gain a way to help their employees plan for their future. They will have access to aggregated retirement readiness information, including the retirement plan and health savings account data. Employers will also benefit from streamlined administration through a dedicated partner, and integrated tools and services.

Administration March 28, 2017

Plan Health Tools Introduced to Retirement Plan Sponsor Websites

Leading homepages now provide more diverse selections of additional plan data, such as plan participation rates, average salary deferrals, number of properly diversified participants and various participant retirement readiness metrics, Corporate Insight found.
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Firms generally provide more effective retirement plan sponsor site homepages than when the topic was first analyzed in May 2015, according to Corporate Insight’s Retirement Plan Monitor – Institutional Report.

However, there is still significant room for improvement. Most of the homepages provide less than complete selections of plan data, typically limited to the total plan balance, a participant count and perhaps a few basic allocation or activity details. Only 12 of the 28 (43%) total data points identified in the report appear on at least one-third of the analyzed homepages.

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However, the leading homepages now provide more diverse selections of additional plan data, such as plan participation rates, average salary deferrals, number of properly diversified participants and various participant retirement readiness metrics. These data points are often part of new plan health tools that offer intuitive summaries of overall plan health.

In addition to these new plan health resources, firms provide varying levels of additional resources directly on homepages. Participant search tools and sponsor alerts are two of the most important homepage resources and appear on 75% and 67% of pages, respectively, while additional important resources such as sponsor messages (33%), to-do lists (25%) and legislative news (25%) appear less frequently.

Most homepages include a variety of quick links to key site areas, providing direct access to frequently used resources upon login. Homepage organization is also a general strength, and most firms (75%) implement multiple features to help present content in a space-efficient manner, such as expandable sections, tab structures, section view filters and carousels.

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