06 Dec Bridging the Gap Between Financial Wellness & Employer Benefits
Built for financial advisors and their institutions, client/advisor engagement and adoption is always top of mind at Advizr.
This focus was picked up on by several large and very large institutions, all of whom were seeking something previously unavailable to them – the capacity to quickly, efficiently and comprehensively onboard a number of individuals (i.e., participants in mega 401k plans, or a company’s entire employee base), provide them with tangible, actionable financial advice, coordinate and assimilate their benefits, and ultimately, advance financial well-being across the entire population of individuals.
In part due to the cashflow-based but goal-oriented architecture of the Advizr system, in part due to a relentless focus on end-user experience and engagement, the new Advizr Workplace is a natural fit for our existing workflows, as well as for the institutions concerned. The results of Workplace are now available to the market at large and offer a single financial planning and benefits solution for large retirement plans and employee workforces.
Advizr Workplace focuses on the participant, or end-user, and in particular, the provision of employee benefits, defined contribution / defined benefit (DC/DB) plan participation, matching, as well as life, health and disability insurance. The solution is designed to highlight all the ancillary benefits a corporation provides to its employee base, but that has traditionally gone underused or unnoticed, to the detriment of both the employer and the employee.
As every employer knows, employee workplace benefits represent a significant cost to their bottom line. In fact, in the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics survey of Sept 2017, just 68.3% of total employer compensation costs were represented by actual compensation, whereas the remaining 31.7% of costs were directly related to benefits and their provision to employees.
For any employer, and the third-party administrators (TPAs) that serve them, this represents one of two things: either a massive, immediate and ubiquitous problem, or a massive, immediate and ubiquitous opportunity. Anchored in an easily accessible, highly intuitive and beautifully designed participant portal, Advizr Workplace assimilates and illustrates all facets of an employee’s financial scope.
The benefits of engaging an employee in this type of financial planning and wellness structure are both immediate and long-term. The gains are seen across nearly all employee demographics, from the factory floor, to middle management and c-suite. Employers offering financial wellness planning tools see an increase in employee engagement and retention, a decrease in employee stress levels and greater overall productivity.
According to Mercer, employees spend ~13 hours per month worrying about money matters at work, equating to a serious loss of productivity for companies. This shows there is significant potential for ROI by assisting employees in better managing their personal finances to meet their financial goals.
Advizr’s ability to capture comprehensive data through low-effort, high-value touch allows the platform to analyze and report on high-level institutional metrics that show adoption and usage, as well as offers fine-grained detail on the employee population’s usage of the platform. As an inbuilt component of the program, this provides instant, trackable and ongoing data points for any organization, easily building the case for an ROI that well exceeds its costs.
Our goal is to always facilitate the spread and usage of financial planning, and our new Advizr Workplace offers just that. We are excited to announce its deployment into the broader market and look forward to working with you, your organizations, employees and plan participants.
Note: This is a post to explain the new Advizr Workplace. Stay tuned for our next post “Advizr Accelerate” to learn more about our recently announced program to assist with financial planning execution.