
Retirement Planning Education for Employees: Track and Stack
As Quarter 4 draws near, Plan Sponsors may be wondering how they can help employees capture the end of the year energy to plan for retirement. One of our new favorite ways is to combine a well-known method with a newer system: track and stack. Tracking habits and progress towards goals is a method known to help motivate employees towards goals. But habit stacking is a new method that is stirring up a lot of interest for its impact.

IRAs Today: Employee Education
Some changes to IRAs in the Secure Act 2.0 may have brought employees to think about how they may want to incorporate IRAs into their retirement savings plan. Towards that end, Plan Sponsors may want to offer employees a few key details on why IRAs can benefit their savings.

Supreme Court Cases for Sponsors
A handful of cases slated to be heard by the Supreme Court this Fall could be important for Plan Sponsors. Here’s what to know.

Communication Overload as a Compliance Problem.
On an individual level, communication overload can be a serious problem in terms of employee productivity and job satisfaction. On an enterprise level, communication can have serious compliance repercussions. Generic tips for using to-do lists and AI to sort your inbox don’t fully address the problem and its impact on decision-making.

Not the Same Old, Same Old, When It Comes to Getting Older
Recent studies may challenge assumptions on retirement planning, for clients and advisors. Taken together, the studies show a compelling conclusion that using a financial planner greatly increases the chances of succeeding saving sufficiently for retirement. Read on for three takeaways.

Communications and Content Creation Series 1: Audit and Assess for Success
If the launch of a new platform rattles your marketing department, it may be because your firm’s communications plan is based too much on responding and less on a clear executable strategy. Through a series of articles, we make it easy to streamline your communications and content creation so that you can capture more leads and have a smoother pipeline of prospective clients.

DOL’s Request for Public Comment on SECURE 2.0’s Emergency Savings Accounts
As an update to our June 2023 article on auto-enrolling employees in emergency savings accounts, we thought it might be worthwhile to highlight that the DOL is specifically requesting comment on the reporting requirements concerning Emergency Savings Accounts and detail the two questions on which the DOL seeks comment.

A Third Option in the Struggle Between Credit Cards and 401(k)s
Credit card debt competes with saving, for retirement or emergencies, on the spreadsheet cells of your employees’ budget. This war of intentions is particularly noticeable in younger generations, like GenZ, those just entering the workforce. Here’s a review of how credit card debt impacts retirement saving.

Plan Participant Education: Five Places to Start
New research shows that over half of all plan participants can’t pass a basic retirement education quiz. But where to start? Here are a few suggestions of where to begin with a plan participant education program.

About Those Incentives: Is Your Gift Allowed Under Secure Act 2.0 on Enrollment Incentives?
Deliberating over de minimis incentives to boost participation in 401(k) and 403(b) plans? We discuss the details of the new provision in this article about Section 113 of the Secure 2.0 Act.

Student Loans and Credit Card Debt: A Perfect Storm May Wreck Your Employees’ Retirement
A perfect storm occurs rarely, when two or more meteorological events come together to create disastrous effects much more so than if the two events had happened individually. The impact of student loans coming due at the same time as a significant amount of bad debt written off by credit card companies may just be one of those rare, disastrous situations.

…Are You Ready For it? Brush Up Your Leadership Communication Skills to Find the Holy Ground of Employee Benefits Satisfaction
It’s not an epiphany that employee benefits are a significant tool in recruiting and retaining employees. How can you be sure you’ve got the right end game in sight? Before you go singing “it’s me, Hi, I’m the problem,” you may want to consider two basics of leadership communications.

Next up in Marketing Content: Scannability in Four Fs
Your content may be perfect, but if it isn’t organized to flow well with how readers consume information, it might as well be a smoke signal. Here’s how improving scannability can help financial advisors win more warm leads.

Tech Dollars at Work: Emerging FinTech for Financial Advisors
If your tech budget is a tad limited, making your tech dollars work means focusing on getting the most for your money. Haphazard upgrading can lead to deficits in how your technology integrates as an enterprise. To avoid tech debt, you may want to consider these new products.

Shake, Shake, Shake It Up: Additional Legislation and Court Cases that Could Impact Retirement Planning
All eyes may be on clarifying the Secure Act 2.0, but other legislative changes could keep advisors on their toes. Especially if the Supreme Court challenges administrative agency authority. Here’s what to consider.