Break from the Grind February 4, 2022

FRIDAY FUN – February 4, 2022

And now it's time for some FRIDAY FUN!

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A monkey magic trick, a chair fail, a failure to launch, and more.

In Boise, Idaho, a family made a surprising discovery while remodeling their home. When they removed roof shingles that were covering a bedroom wall, they found about 1,600 baseball cards from the 1970s and 1980s glued to the plaster. UPI reports that the new owners of the home contacted the son of the original owners who said the cards are unlikely to be of any value, even if they weren’t glued. The new owners said the cards are affixed to the wall too strongly to remove, and they are willing to allow someone to take the wall away, if interested.

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In Arlington, Virginia, the Pentagon recently had an unusual national security situation. According to UPI, the Animal Welfare League of Arlington were summoned to the U.S. Department of Defense headquarters when a “chicken was caught sneaking around the security area at the Pentagon.” The crisis was averted, and the chicken has a new permanent home at a Virginia animal sanctuary.

A monkey’s mind is blown. If you can’t view the below video, try https://youtu.be/paNDdoXpPrg.

Taking in stride a fall through a broken chair. If you can’t view the below video, try https://youtu.be/-vGbJrkW254.

Failure to launch. A man attempting to launch his boat into a lake using a ramp ended up with his boat, trailer and pickup truck submerged in the water.

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Products February 3, 2022

American Trust Partners With iJoin on Retirement Solutions

The alliance will offer participants a personalized enrollment, investment and education experience.

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American Trust Retirement Services has announced a five-year agreement with retirement plan technology provider iJoin to grow the full-service retirement plan provider’s solutions for advisers serving the small and midsized market.

American Trust will deploy iJoin’s technology strategy to scale in-house retirement plan programs and grow its business process outsourcing (BPO) white label institutional offering. 

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The partnership allows American Trust to fuel company growth though iJoin’s personalized retirement plan enrollment experience, managed account program and engagement engine for advisers, the company states.

“It’s one thing to aspire to scale, it’s another to deliver a superior user experience supported by technologies that are at once flexible and robust to meet the business requirements of our clients and partners,” says Micah DiSalvo, chief revenue officer for American Trust. “iJoin has helped us come to market sooner with a well-differentiated offering that has reduced cost, risk and, importantly, time to market when you compare it to building and supporting a solution in-house.”

The partnership will present retirement plan participants with an experience that includes individualized enrollment, a managed account option and education and financial wellness tied to each user. American Trust made the agreement because iJoin can drive access to deep, real-time data from American Trust’s recordkeeping platform to produce helpful data analytics and insights on plan health and participant retirement readiness. Additionally, advisers can access data-driven insights and customized email campaigns that target participants who need assistance.

American Trust’s deployment of iJoin includes EXPLORE, an education and financial wellness extension of the participant experience that draws on the same underlying data to present a personalized path for each user. User inputs in EXPLORE automatically update iJoin and the recordkeeping system.  

“We strongly believe the winners ahead will be those companies that invest in technology and rapid business performance improvements to deliver a highly personalized, cost-efficient, goals-based savings experience and adviser managed account program,” says Steve McCoy, CEO of iJoin.

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