From the retirement planning skeptic to the high salaried saver, PAi’s new “Retirement Planning People” provide potential savings scenarios to represent all stages of life, helping plan participants envision their future in retirement.
These saver personas and all relevant resources provide participants with a way to relate to or compare various savings scenarios with their own unique situation, starting with commonalities like career path, salary, current savings, and desired retirement age.
Pai.com/savers provides a place for advisors and plan sponsors to direct employees to learn more about preparing for retirement and how choices they make now can impact their future later.
From the younger plan participant who isn’t sure where to start saving for retirement, to the newly eligible employee who needs help enrolling or understanding the benefits of saving in a 401k, to the older saver who may need to start utilizing catch up contributions, PAi’s new content strategy features these scenarios, and many more, to promote plan engagement and help participants relate to their own savings situation.
“We know our customers have unique personalities and interests and are in different places on their savings journey. Because of diverse backgrounds and situations, varied messaging and customized alerts resonate on a deeper level, resulting in higher plan engagement. We are incorporating this new educational content into a personalized approach with our alerts system,” said Skyla Loritz, senior marketing and communications manager at PAi, a DePere, Wis.-based wholly owned subsidiary of Newport Group, Inc.
On the website, employees can hover over any of 10 different animated “retirement planning people” at various ages and career stages—all with their own detailed backstories—to learn more about them and their current savings situation, and decide which “person” they relate to most. They can also review their “Years of Retirement Calculator” projections to get a better idea of what their future will look like, and can of course also run their own Years of Retirement projections.
PAi’s CoPilot recordkeeping features include tailored, event-based alerts and the Years of Retirement calculator designed to show participants how many years they can afford to be retired, not just how many dollars they’ve saved. These CoPilot services have proven effective, the company says, as PAi said it has seen CoPilot plans having a higher average participation rate than plans without the CoPilot features.
“This is why we’ve extended our CoPilot services to all plans sold with PAi. With the market volatility and the uncertainty this last year has brought, the importance of being well-informed on how your actions may positively or negatively impact your retirement remains higher than ever,” said Amy Hermann, director of sales and marketing at PAi. “Providing CoPilot to all plan participants, along with additional resources like these personas, supports our vision of a world where workers own their retirement readiness.”
While the personas are already available for access on pai.com, participants in CoPilot plans can expect to see these new tools featured in their plan alerts, updates, and resources in the coming months. The new education-focused communications format will include a prompt for account review, plan comparison, and related information available—all in line with increased plan contribution and participation rates for the year ahead.
Veteran financial services industry journalist Brian Anderson joined 401(k) Specialist as Managing Editor in January 2019. He has led editorial content for a variety of well-known properties including Insurance Forums, Life Insurance Selling, National Underwriter Life & Health, and Senior Market Advisor. He has always maintained a focus on providing readers with timely, useful information intended to help them build their business.
