Financial Finesse & The Society of Actuaries Expand Research Partnership Series Focused on Retirement Literacy Issues

Not All Retirement Tools are Created Equal

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Oct 15, 2019, 10:00 ET

EL SEGUNDO, Calif., Oct. 15, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Financial Finesse, the nation's leading provider of unbiased workplace financial wellness benefits, announced today the release of the latest installment in a series of retirement literacy research briefs published in partnership with the Society of Actuaries Aging & Retirement Strategic Research Program. As part of their shared mission to better evaluate and help solve for retirement literacy issues, the SOA and Financial Finesse assessed a suite of various retirement planning tools and shared their findings in the Retirement Planning Tools Brief with the goal of helping people clearly understand how different retirement planning tools are used to estimate how much money you should be saving in order to retire with confidence.

Greg Ward, director of the Financial Wellness Think Tank at Financial Finesse and co-author of the research series, said, "The goal of our work is to blend the beauty of actuarial science with the principles of financial planning such that every American is able to pursue their retirement goals with confidence."

With multiple generations in the workplace, organizations must tailor their benefits offerings to serve an incredibly diverse pool of financial and personal needs. Consequently, "we are seeing traditional retirement planning practices being replaced by holistic financial wellness programs capable of engaging all employees and providing immediate value to the entire workforce from day one," said Financial Finesse CEO, Liz Davidson.

However, with over three hundred vendors now claiming to offer financial wellness services, from providing personalized coaching on budgeting and health-care expenses to offering advanced payday loans, plan sponsors can struggle to collectively define what constitutes a true financial wellness offering and more importantly measure the success and ROI of new financial wellness programs. Consequently, this shared vision to help bring clarity to a rapidly evolving landscape has evolved into an exciting catalyst for innovative research in the historically fuzzy field of financial wellness.

In a recent report from Cerulli Associates on the struggle to measure the success of new financial wellness programs, Cerulli managing director of U.S. research, Bing Waldert, noted that case studies like Financial Finesse's 2018 Financial Wellness Year in Review showing how employees who participated in a financial wellness program made significantly greater contributions to their 401(k) plans and health savings accounts over a five-year period are "instrumental in demonstrating the value of a financial wellness program and setting expectations for plan sponsor clients."

In addition to this series of retirement literacy briefs and the ongoing Financial Wellness Think Tank research publications, Ward also published an essay entitled, Calculating ROI: Measuring the Benefits of Workplace Financial Wellness, which was awarded first prize by the Society of Actuaries' Committee on Post-Retirement Needs and Risks (CPRNR) in 2017.

The SOA will host a podcast to discuss the findings from this latest research project. If you have questions regarding this collaborative research initiative, or to be notified of when the podcast or future research is available, please contact:

Greg Ward, CFP®, Financial Wellness Think Tank™ Director
[email protected]
828-308-8028

ABOUT FINANCIAL FINESSE:
Founded in 1999, Financial Finesse is the largest independent provider of unbiased workplace Financial Wellness programs. All services are designed by unbiased Certified Financial Planner™ professionals who do not sell any financial products nor manage assets and delivered as completely subsidized employee benefits.

SOURCE Financial Finesse