John Hancock Retirement Plan Services has jumped into the 401k financial wellness fray in a big way with its Financial Wellness Assessment, a new tool offered to its plans at no cost to sponsors or participants.
The tool includes a questionnaire for participants that covers the major financial wellness topics currently affecting too many workers, including paying off debt, creating an emergency fund, saving for retirement, estate planning and planning for healthcare.
Once a participant provides answers, the tool assesses their current level of financial wellness, generates a personal action plan and “points to curated financial wellness resources to help address specific financial needs and priorities.”
The action plans offer suggestions for improving budgeting, debt management, saving, and investing, all areas identified as stressors in the company’s 2017 Financial Stress Survey. The survey indicated that more than seven in 10 workers have felt moderate to extreme stress in the last six months and 66 percent say finances are the cause.
“Our most recent Financial Stress Survey shows that much of the population still experiences financial stress and people need help managing their overall financial picture to alleviate the stress—and enable saving for retirement,” Patrick Murphy, president of John Hancock Retirement Plan Services, said in a statement. “We see retirement as part of a holistic financial journey and the more we can help our participants address the issues that may be a barrier to saving and reduce financial stress, the more we’ve achieved our ultimate goal of improving retirement readiness.”
The company added that while helping participants is the main goal of the offering, the Financial Wellness Assessment also helps 401k advisors and plan sponsors “enhance the participant engagement experience by providing supplemental insights into the needs of plan participants and creates an opportunity to tailor plan-specific education programs.”
With more than 20 years serving financial markets, John Sullivan is the former editor-in-chief of Investment Advisor magazine and retirement editor of ThinkAdvisor.com. Sullivan is also the former editor of Boomer Market Advisor and Bank Advisor magazines, and has a background in the insurance and investment industries in addition to his journalism roots.
