Plan Health Tools Introduced to Retirement Plan Sponsor Websites

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.

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.