Report : DC Retirement | November 30, 2022

Pulse on plan sponsors

Retirement recordkeeping insights from Coalition Greenwich

Read Time: 5 Minutes

A recent report from Coalition Greenwich captures the sentiments of plan sponsors and consultants around retirement plan recordkeeping. Plan sponsors named Vanguard as the number one recordkeeper in terms of overall satisfaction. Here’s a look at some of the report’s key takeaways, which reflect Vanguard’s commitment to recordkeeping and providing clients with a highly personalized, technology-driven experience.

What plan sponsors value

The survey asked 145 U.S. plan sponsors to identify what they see as the most important criteria for selecting a recordkeeper. Here are the top three areas of importance for plan sponsors:
Cost/Fees
Plan sponsors and participants can benefit from Vanguard’s low-cost structure.* We prioritize fair and transparent pricing, in fact, the report ranked Vanguard number one among recordkeepers in providing “good value for the money.” 
*Vanguard average expense ratio: 0.09%. Industry average expense ratio: 0.49%. All averages are asset-weighted. Industry averages exclude Vanguard. Sources: Vanguard and Morningstar, Inc., as of December 31, 2021.
Scope of services/Capabilities
Costs are important, but so is quality. Plan sponsors deserve a plan that offers best-in-class investments, expert thought leadership, and a commitment to easing administrative burdens. Vanguard received high marks for our breadth of product offerings and ranked first in categories like assistance with meeting fiduciary responsibilities and ease of doing business.
Participant experience
Plan sponsors and their participants are at the center of everything we do. This is reflected in our number one ranking for quality of call center support and our high scores for quality of participant educational materials and sessions.

Prioritizing technology

The ability to leverage technology is becoming the benchmark by which plan sponsors measure their recordkeepers. The report found that 96% of plan sponsors consider technology “extremely/very important” when selecting a new retirement recordkeeper.

The three key things they look for are improved participant website functionality, powerful analytics, and a sophisticated platform. Vanguard has addressed each of these needs with several new and enhanced service offerings:  

Participant website
A personalized web experience can help encourage positive action, so we’ve developed customizable dashboards, intuitive chat features, and a Financial Wellness hub, all with the goal of promoting financial well-being for participants. 
Analytics
Plan sponsors can uncover participant trends, identify areas of opportunity, and pull reports on their plan’s performance through our client portal. And coming soon, enhancements to My Plan Manager™ will make collaboration and analysis even easier.
Sophistication
We deliver experiences that inspire action in participants and optimize decision-making for plan sponsors. Our clients benefit right now from AI-powered personalized participant journeys and advanced analytics. As we continue to modernize and transition to our cloud-native recordkeeping platform, participants will have a seamless experience across all channels, and plan sponsors will be able to quickly project outcomes for plan design changes and understand their potential impact through our plan modeling tool. 
Looking for more

The report found that, overall, plan sponsors are highly satisfied with their retirement recordkeepers, with over 80% rating their recordkeeper as “excellent/very good.” However, in an increasingly complex financial landscape, plan sponsors also indicated that they’re looking for expanded offerings, including insightful advice, educational resources, and effective investments, all delivered through user-friendly technology, to help them guide their participants toward better outcomes.

We’re striving to achieve the very same thing. Vanguard Well on Your Way™, our comprehensive approach to financial well-being, is designed to help improve participant outcomes by pairing our personalized financial wellness experiences, enduring investments, and advice services with technology that helps participants take control of their futures.

Discover why Well on Your Way is the only financial well-being program of its kind. 

Note:

  • All investing is subject to risk, including the possible loss of the money you invest.