Voya Partners With Vault for Student Loan Benefit Solution

The Vault platform provides employers with three core offerings that can be made available to employees.

Voya Financial Inc. announced a strategic relationship with Vault, a student loan benefit technology provider, to offer its platform as an optional service to Voya workplace clients.

The Vault platform provides employers with three core offerings that can be made available to employees, including:

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  • Vault Advisor, which provides analysis and guidance on how to best deal with existing loans;
  • Vault Pay, which allows employers to directly pay down student loan debt for their employees; and
  • Vault Match, which allows employers to match student loan debt payments and make a nonelective contribution into an employee’s qualified retirement plan.

Employers also have access to Splash Financial, a student loan-refinancing platform that saves employees money through low rates.

“Our research has found that 96% of individuals with student loan debt would be likely or very likely to save more for retirement if they felt like they had their student debt under control,” says Charlie Nelson, CEO of Retirement and Employee Benefits at Voya Financial. “For many Americans, student debt—for themselves, a spouse or a child—has increasingly become a major roadblock to saving for their future. We’re thrilled to offer a solution that aligns with our commitment to providing holistic wellness solutions that can help our plan participants achieve greater security in retirement.”

Judge Moves Forward Suit Over Walgreen Plan TDF Mismanagement

The judge rejected the defendants’ argument that the complaint cannot be based solely on the funds’ underperformance but must contain more specific allegations.

In a concise order, U.S. District Judge Charles Ronald Norgle of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois has declined to dismiss a lawsuit alleging fiduciaries of the Walgreen Profit-Sharing Retirement Plan breached their fiduciary duties by selecting and retaining poorly performing target-date funds (TDFs) for the plan.

The defendants say that the lawsuit should be dismissed for failure to state a claim, arguing that the complaint cannot be based solely on the funds’ underperformance but must contain more specific allegations regarding the defendants’ conduct and fund-selection process. In addition, the defendants say the funds to which the plaintiffs compare the plan’s TDFs are not proper and that the proper benchmark is one that “actually reflects the funds’ investment strategy.”

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Nagle cited previous cases which found “whether a particular investment choice was imprudent is a particularly fact-sensitive inquiry that would not be appropriate to resolve on a motion to dismiss,” and “[Employee Retirement Income Security Act] plaintiffs generally lack the inside information necessary to make out their claims in detail unless and until discovery commences.” Nagle said discovery in the case will proceed.

He did, however, dismiss claims regarding two of the funds in the TDF series, agreeing with the defendants that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue regarding funds in which they did not personally invest.

Nagle warned that the “plaintiffs’ claims may ultimately fail if they rely solely on evidence of underperformance.”

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