Ascensus Announces Expansion of Personalized Advice and Managed Account Services

Firm's Technology Integration Offers Institutional Partners and Advisors More Flexibility on Its Open-Architecture Platform

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Ascensus

Sep 01, 2020, 10:00 ET

DRESHER, Pa., Sept. 1, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Ascensus—whose technology and expertise help millions of people save for retirement, education, and healthcare—has created the infrastructure to expand the managed account services available to its institutional partners and clients. With an open-architecture platform and no proprietary investment requirements, Ascensus is well positioned to support this enhanced level of partner choice. The firm now offers four personalized advice and managed account services, with plans to add more options in the future.

Industry research has shown that employees today seek personalized advice services to help them chart appropriate savings strategies. According to Deloitte, retirement plan sponsors are recording higher-than-ever utilization of managed accounts. In 2019, one in five plan sponsors reported at least 10 percent of employees used managed account services.¹ In response to participant interest and demand, more than half of plan sponsors are offering a managed account service, with this percentage continuing to rise.²

"The retirement industry is seeing a trend toward saver personalization, and we believe that managed account solutions are an important piece of that puzzle," states Dan Basile, Ascensus' head of product. "By investing in the technology to support choice in advice services, we're better positioned to offer our partners the ability to implement their own fiduciary solutions moving forward. And, by expanding the managed account services Ascensus offers, we can give financial advisors the freedom to choose the option best suited to their clients' goals."

Ascensus offers managed account services from Morningstar Investment Management, NextCapital, Russell Investments, and Stadion. Institutional partners and financial advisors may choose to make one or several of these services available to clients during the plan proposal process.

"We will continue to leverage our purpose-built technology to offer our institutional partners expanded choice and enable them to deliver personalized account management services to their clients and savers," states David Musto, Ascensus' president and CEO.

About Ascensus
Ascensus helps millions of people save for what matters—retirement, education, and healthcare. Through co-branded, private-labeled, and other governmental partnerships, our technology, market insights, and business knowledge enhance the growth and success of our partners, their clients, and savers. Ascensus is the largest independent recordkeeping services provider, third-party administrator, and government savings facilitator in the United States. For more information, visit ascensus.com.

Get the latest trends and insights based on our proprietary data from more than 115,500 retirement plans, 6.2 million 529 accounts, 405,000 health savings accounts, and 22 ABLE plans.* Inside America's Savings Plans highlights average savings levels across these tax-advantaged accounts and showcases plan features that drive participation and growth. The State of Savings report outlines how plan contribution and withdrawal behaviors have shifted over the course of 2020 and since the passage of the CARES Act.

*As of June 30, 2020.

¹ Source: 2019 Defined Contribution Benchmarking Survey Report, Deloitte, 2019.
² Source: The Cerulli Report: U.S. Retirement Markets 2018.

SOURCE Ascensus