Ascensus Debuts AI-Driven Virtual Coach for Personalized Financial Wellness

Partnership with Financial Finesse Delivers Tailored Guidance to Employees

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May 04, 2021, 10:04 ET

DRESHER, Pa., May 4, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Ascensus—whose technology and expertise help millions of people save for retirement, education, and healthcare—has enhanced its financial wellness offering to include Financial Finesse's Aimee^TM: Artificial Intelligence Motivating Employees Everywhere.

Aimee is a first-of-its-kind virtual coach that is available to all Ascensus and institutional partner plans that offer Financial Finesse's program to savers. It uses machine learning to provide employees with personalized, real-time guidance that can help build short-term financial resiliency while considering long-term financial goals. For advisors looking to deliver innovative retirement plan solutions that include financial wellness to employers, Aimee further deepens the value and attractiveness of the financial wellness benefit.

Aimee's launch is the latest in a series of strategic technology investments Ascensus has made to provide more personalization and guidance throughout employees' retirement planning journey. In 2020, the firm launched the READYSAVE^TM retirement mobile app and announced the expansion of its managed account investment offerings, with plans to onboard additional managed account providers in 2021. Beginning in May 2021, Ascensus' digital financial wellness experience will benefit from these Aimee-enabled enhancements:

Greater personalization: Real-time guidance and custom action plans are designed to help achieve individualized milestones.
Increased engagement: Dynamic financial wellness scores and dashboard motivate employees to continuously track and improve upon their progress.
Enhanced reporting: Aimee captures insights on employees' key financial questions and priorities to illuminate workforce wellness trends for employers.

"In today's world, providing employees access to personalized guidance and education services like Aimee can lead to more informed financial choices," states Kevin Cox, Ascensus' president of Retirement. "Ascensus is proud to partner with Financial Finesse, which continues to deliver innovative solutions for advisors seeking to offer plan sponsors and their employees tools that can lead to a more secure retirement."

Financial Finesse has provided their Fortune 1000-level financial wellness benefit through Ascensus since 2018. The firm built Aimee based on learnings from years of one-on-one financial coaching, input from its network of CFP^®professionals, two decades of proprietary data from its award-winning Financial Wellness Think Tank^TM, and behavioral psychology research. Financial Finesse never solicits, promotes, or cross-sells products, making them a well-aligned partner to Ascensus and complementary source of insights and tools to advisors and their clients.

"Ascensus is paving new ground with the launch of Aimee to bring unlimited, personalized financial coaching to every single retirement plan participant, regardless of income, job type, or any other factor," says Liz Davidson, founder and CEO of Financial Finesse. "To my knowledge, they're the only recordkeeper that has made an investment of this scale in an independent financial wellness program to create retirement plans that truly prioritize participants."

"The launch also underscores Ascensus' commitment to supporting its retirement plan advisors, who can now easily combine best-in-class financial coaching with their own best-in-class offering," concludes Davidson.

About Financial Finesse
Financial Finesse is the country's leading independent provider of unbiased workplace financial wellness programs. Since 1999, the firm has helped over 10,000 organizations improve their bottom lines and become more competitive by empowering their employees to achieve financial security. The company's award-winning financial wellness programs are made available to employees at no cost as an employer-sponsored benefit. With highly personalized and ongoing one-on-one coaching from CFP® professionals, AI-powered virtual coaching, live workshops, webcasts, educational tools and content, Financial Finesse reaches over 2.4 million individuals every year. www.financialfinesse.com

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 113,700 retirement plans, 6.0 million 529 accounts, 426,500 health savings accounts, and 23 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 December 31, 2020.

SOURCE Ascensus