Plan Progress Webinar Series: Plan Benchmarking

Using retirement plan data and a mission statement to define and measure success.

While many plan sponsors focus their benchmarking efforts on fees and other external measures, especially for fiduciary due diligence, benchmarking internally can also be an important effort, according to retirement experts and plan sponsor representatives at PLANSPONSOR’s recent Plan Progress Webinar on plan benchmarking.

Two plan sponsor speakers said they benchmark their retirement plan data to compare progress to the plans’ goals and against similar peers, allowing the employers to measure and define success in reaching retirement plan goals and to more precisely measure the plan’s success.

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Plan sponsors should develop benchmarking best practices; develop a mission statement to inform and guide their effort; compare their plan data with plans of similar size and industry; and use multiple recordkeeper datasets—their own, others’ and those publicly available—to extract the optimal value from the sponsors’ time and efforts, the webinar participants explained.  

Consider Peer Examples

The City of Milwaukee 457(b) Deferred Compensation Plan continues to benchmark retirement plan data and has also used benchmarking that revealed race and gender retirement preparedness gaps in their plan, said Beth Conradson Cleary, the plan’s executive director.

Benchmarking plan data was critical in “closing a lot of our disparity gaps,” Cleary noted. “Benchmarking was a big way that we were able to both show that there was an issue and then also demonstrate effective outcomes after we made some changes.”

Benchmarking plan data allows the plans’ operators to delve deeper than simply observing high-level data such as participation rates and contributions.  

The City of Milwaukee plan managers, after looking at their benchmarking data, “realized that there was a big gap specific to our Black employees and our Latino employees regarding retirement plan participation and retirement savings,” Cleary said. “We decided to incorporate the auto-enrollment feature into our current design, which is when we saw a big shift.”

For developing benchmarking best practices, Cleary advised other plan sponsors to look at what peers are doing that has proven successful.

“If you want to look at best practices, look at the winners of the PLANSPONSOR awards … and find out what they’re doing to get to where they’re at and try to emulate them, because: Why reinvent the wheel if you don’t have to?” Cleary said.

Have a Mission Statement

Baked goods manufacturer Aunt Millie’s Bakieries benchmarks the company’s plan based on its revised mission statement, said Judy Bobilya Feher, its chief financial officer.

“This is not our first mission statement; this one actually has more of a lean toward financial wellness programs and the ability of education tools, as well as retirement readiness,” Feher said. “We changed this earlier this year, [because] we were probably more of that ‘check the box’ on the fiduciary [responsibilities], make sure you’re looking at the investment plan fees and be very protective from that standpoint.”

Stephanie Hunt, a senior retirement plan consultant at OneDigital, said, “Most companies we work with, they just tend to focus on benchmarking the fees, because that is the easy thing and that is where the lawsuits are. That has just generally been the focus, but to really drill down into gender and race and the plan design, comparing it to what others are doing, that’s definitely where we would love to see more companies get to.”

Plan sponsors without a mission statement to guide their benchmarking efforts should develop one that articulates the goals they are trying to reach, said Josh Itzoe, founder and CEO of FiduciaryWor(k)s, a retirement plan advisory offering fiduciary customer relationship management.  

“There’s certain things [plan sponsors] do to benchmark that are just good fiduciary hygiene every year, like going to the doctor and getting the check-up,” he said, identifying in both the City of Milwaukee and Aunt Millie’s stories a common theme. “Both plans had a mission statement, and that mission statement was focused on the success of the plan.”

Establishing that mission statement will allow plan sponsors to target their benchmarking and their analysis, leading to improved results.

“It is important to look externally and, certainly, from a risk management standpoint, but [plan benchmarking] should be: What’s that mission? What is our vision? What do we what do we envision for our people and what success looks like?” Itzoe said. “Then let us benchmark in terms of how we’re doing versus what we believe is most important, not necessarily what other plans are doing in the marketplace.”

Aon to Pay $13.4B for NFP

The two firms will operate independently, with a “connected platform” linking NFP to Aon.

Aon plc Wednesday announced its plans to acquire retirement, insurance, and wealth advisory NFP for an estimated purchase price of $13.4 billion.

NFP will continue to operate as an independent company on a “connected platform” with Aon and will be known as NFP, an Aon company. Doug Hammond, chairman and CEO of NFP, will continue to lead the business, reporting to Eric Andersen, president of Aon, a global provider of risk, retirement, and health solutions to employers.


Aon will fund the deal with $7 billion in cash and $6.4 billion in Aon stock, including funds affiliated with NFP’s main capital sponsor, Madison Dearborn Partners, and funds affiliated with HPS Investment Partners, according to the announcement. 

London-based Aon makes the move with the goal of expanding its business among large- and middle-market employers seeking services in insurance, health benefits, wealth and retirement advisement, the firm announced on the call. The firm noted progress it has made in building its Aon Business Services platform that will work well with NFP’s larger pool of clients.

“Given the investment in Aon Business Services, we are now in a position to deliver the same content and capabilities we deliver to large clients efficiently to middle market clients through NFP,” the firm wrote in a presentation announcing the deal.

In the presentation, Aon pegged the middle market for risk, wealth and health at $30 billion and “growing quickly,” presenting its business division as poised to “enhance distribution” to clients.

“We have continually evolved our leading capabilities to better serve our clients’ growing needs amidst increasing volatility across the marketplace,” Greg Case, Aon’s CEO, said on the call. “The acquisition will advance our relevance to clients, create opportunities for our colleagues and further strengthen our shared cultural values.”

Aon noted on the call that the transaction is “financially attractive” due to expected contributions to revenue growth and long-term free cash flow generation.

New York-based NFP was founded in 1999 and was acquired by Madison Dearborn Partners in 2013 for $1.3 billion. The firm has been active in the acquisition trend bringing together employee benefits and wealth management with the acquisition of Divergent Wealth Advisors LLC in September and Wealthspire Advisors in June.

The firm’s wealth and retirement division has more than $50 billion in assets under management and $400 billion of assets under advisement, according to Wednesday’s presentation.

“This is an exciting milestone in NFP’s evolution that reflects the tremendous quality of the business we’ve built and the exceptional people who drive our success,” Hammond said in a statement. “Our clients will benefit from Aon’s global resources and distribution, while our people will have more opportunities to accelerate the growth of NFP.”

Aon will bring NFP’s more than 7,700 employees and more than $2.2 billion in revenue to the firm, according to details released on an Aon conference call.

The transaction, subject regulatory approvals and other conditions, is expected to close in mid-2024, according to Aon. The firms will continue to operate independently until the closing date.

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