“The vast majority of a person’s financial needs are met in their place of employment,” Brad Arends said at the outset of his presentation Sunday afternoon at Outcomes Conference 2019 in Denver.
Arends, president and CEO of Minnesota-based (and weirdly capitalization-averse) intellicents, emphasized the value of private wealth management in ensuring positive participant outcomes and the role financial wellness—cost-effectively—plays.
“You’ll get the owners private wealth, that’s easy, but you have to find a way to get the underserved 99% of the workers as well,” he argued.
He then offered up intellicents five-step process for “financial wellness that actually works.”
They are:
Set a goal
Conduct a formal workplace financial wellness assessment of your employees, identifying the “big issues.” You then set a measurable goal for your financial wellness program.
Organization
A key to personal financial fitness is to first “get all your financial affairs in order.” Organizing all your assets, liabilities, and important legal documents in one place are mission-critical.
Education
This can include an online financial learning center, but most also involve targeted messaging, onsite topical workshops, and webcasts, and an 800-number financial hotline staffed by Certified Financial Planners.
Advice
This is what workers want, and it is the missing ingredient in most financial wellness plans, and should include an affordable financial plan available to all employees.
Benchmarking
Employee utilization, satisfaction, and behavior change must be monitored annually. The best way to measure an employer’s return-on-investment, however, is to annually benchmark the aggregate retirement readiness rate of its workforce, and the aggregate cost of delayed retirement.
“We also have intellicents university, which has modules for plan sponsors, participants and retirees,” Arends added. “It gives them some information and then drives them towards us for financial planning. The ultimate goal is individual financial planning as an employee benefit for every worker, and that’s what we’re moving towards.”
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.
