Broadcast Retirement Network’s Jeffrey Snyder discusses financial wellness program impact with SS&C Technologies’ Alicia Hartjen and the Employee Benefit Research Institute’s Jake Spiegel.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Today’s conversation is around financial wellness and joining me, we’re gonna welcome back to the program, Alicia Hartjen of the SS&C Technologies and joining us a new guest on the program, Jake Spiegel joins us from the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Alicia, great to see you, Jake, great to meet you. Great to be back.
Thanks for having me. Absolutely, I love talking about financial wellness because I feel like this is something that I think a lot of Americans are tuned into. They have some challenges with affordability, which we’ll talk a little bit about later on, but Jake, I wanna come to you because you do a lot of employee benefits research for EBRI, are companies concerned about their employees’ financial wellness, their financial capabilities, their financial stress?
Jake Spiegel, Employee Benefit Research Institute
Yeah, we are seeing some evidence of that. We survey large employers with over 500 workers to get our hands around the question of how these companies are envisioning employee benefits, how they’re envisioning financial wellness benefits in particular. We find that large employers are becoming increasingly concerned with their employees’ financial wellbeing.
We’ve conducted our financial wellbeing employer survey for eight years and we find that since about 2021, 2022, the share of employers that are responding that they have at least some level of concern, which we’re defining as seven on a scale from one to 10, seven or higher, we’re finding that the share of employers that are at least somewhat concerned with their employees’ financial wellbeing is increasing and it’s about 87% for 2025.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, it’s scary given all the challenges with affordability. I’m sure people feel a lot of strain, a lot of stress. Are employees looking to their employers, Jake, for financial wellness assistance?
So we know the companies are definitely interested. I’m assuming they’re hearing something from their employees.
Jake Spiegel, Employee Benefit Research Institute
Well, just to bring the focus back to the employers for just another quick second here, we ask employers whether or not they feel they have a responsibility to ensure that their employees are financially well. And we find that overwhelmingly, these companies feel that they have a responsibility, 95% said that they have some responsibility in ensuring that workers are financially secure and well. Now, we ask a lot of the same questions that we ask of employers, of employees as well on another survey that we run, the Workplace Wellness Survey.
And we find that 70% of workers agree that their employer has a responsibility to ensure that workers are financially secure and well. So we think that this really actually provides a huge opportunity for employers because there does appear to be some shared agreement that companies have a role to play in ensuring that their workers are financially secure and well.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Well, Alicia, I wanna come to you. I mean, Jake talks about the need and there clearly is a need being expressed on both sides, employees and employers. Let’s talk about financial wellness.
Your firm has a lot of technology built around financial wellness. How is it using generative AI? That’s kind of the new buzzword now.
How is that being deployed in financial wellness solutions for retirement programs?
Alicia Hartjen, SS&C Technologies
Yeah, so we’re using gen AI to really elevate the employee experience and make it easy for them to find information on whatever their financial challenges are. And really when you think about it, it’s how individuals engage in their day-to-day life today. So we introduced SAGE and SAGE is renamable by our clients, but it’s a gen AI addition to our financial wellness solution.
And what’s impactful about it is it’s a closed system. So only the client approved education is part of that experience and it has guardrails built in and it’s guidance only. So you can ask a question like, I have these three ingredients in my fridge, what should I make?
And SAGE can’t help you with that. But if you ask a question like, should I pay down my college debt or should I save for retirement? You’re gonna get guidance on what you should consider.
And really for us, this is a great way for us to support our clients as they dip their toes into how gen AI can enhance the employee journey. When you think about the record keeping industry in general or the retirement industry in general, there are a lot of great applications of AI from a business process operations perspective. And what we’re now saying is let’s apply that same governance around enhancing the employee experience.
So we’re excited about that from a financial wellness perspective, but I wanna take that to the next step. So that’s really the beginning. So now imagine you have this financial wellness space, now bring in plan and employee data into that SAGE gen AI experience.
Now an employee can ask, should I be contributing more? Well, we now know what’s the match for that employer. We know what the employee is contributing.
And we can now say if there’s a gap and they’re not even contributing to the match, gen AI can tell them, hey, you’re leaving money on the table, can give them some real insights into guidance around how they really need to go take a look at this, understand where they are and direct them next. Take that one more level, if you think about it from an employee benefit perspective, how many times have you come across an employee benefit? You didn’t even know your company offered, it happens to me all the time.
But if SAGE has a view into the benefits the employer is offering, SAGE can elevate those either based on how the individual is engaging with SAGE, the types of discussions they’re having or based on their profile, or we can even use predictive analytics to say, people like you are using these benefits, let’s make sure you’re aware of them. So really gen AI, starting small with financial wellness, it really can have a huge impact on the employee experience going forward. And I know we’re gonna be talking about personalization next, and I think it’s taking personalization to an entirely new level.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
See, that’s a perfect segue, Jay, to personalization and financial wellness. Everything that I read in the retirement industry and really outside is we all want personalization, something created for us, for Jeffrey Snyder, for Jake Spiegel, for Alicia Argent. In financial wellness, how important is that personalization?
Jake Spiegel, Employee Benefit Research Institute
Well, we’re seeing it’s pretty important and we’re definitely seeing evidence of companies transitioning away from more one size fits all solutions to providing financial wellness offerings to more personalized forms of financial wellness offerings. Just five years ago, the most popular form of financial wellbeing benefits included things like seminars, educational materials, things that just aren’t really highly personalized, things that are just sort of one size fits all. Now, firms are increasingly offering things like access to financial coaches for one-on-one counseling.
So we’re definitely seeing responses from employers offering more customized financial wellness offerings.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, and Alicia, that is so important as you intimated and as Jake said, but there have to be some challenges along the way for companies looking to implement financial wellness benefits, financial wellness tools. What are some of those challenges?
Alicia Hartjen, SS&C Technologies
Yeah, integration is key. So it really needs to be, there really needs to be a thoughtful approach for how financial wellness is integrated into the employee experience. It’s not just a matter of throwing it up on a page and hoping people find it.
There needs to be a thoughtful approach to that. It also needs to drive and help individuals improve on outcomes. That’s critical as well.
And then just the last point that I’d make there is financial wellness is fluid. Everyone’s circumstances change all the time. So we at SNC are continually creating content on new themes when there are changes happening out in laws or regulatory changes.
Student debt loans, for example, had a number of federal changes over the last year. This is far from a one and done solution. There needs to be continual assessment of how are we addressing the current needs of individuals?
How are we positioning this? How are we getting in front of them? And then we’re gonna get to next, but how are we now measuring the success of that?
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Okay, so perfect. You might as well ask yourself the question, Alicia. I mean, how do you measure success?
So I’ve been in some of those quarterly meetings with clients and we talk about the contribution rate. We talk about some of these metrics and it feels kind of dated. So I would imagine with Sage, with all the technology that’s behind that, you can actually measure a lot more in terms of some of the metrics.
Alicia Hartjen, SS&C Technologies
Absolutely. So really it all starts with working with our clients to understand what should engagement look like because depending on how it’s integrated, success metrics for an employee benefits financial wellness program are different than if it’s used from a retail perspective or even a record keeping perspective. So recognizing that engagement looks different depending on the use case is important.
Again, that thoughtful approach about integrating it very forward into the employee journey is also critical into the experience. But as you said, Gen AI opens up a lot of new reporting and analytics capabilities, not just from a employee perspective and elevating information to them, but also being able to report back to the client on what we’re seeing. So with Gen AI, we can actually look at what individuals search on and we can go to our client and say, hey, you’ve got a bunch of people who are asking questions on this topic, which you currently aren’t covering from a financial wellness perspective.
Let’s get you some content on that. Let’s add that into the experience. And then on the flip side, we have the content that’s not being leveraged.
Let’s cycle that out. So it kind of goes back to that needing to have a fluid financial wellness experience and really having a very thoughtful dialogue with clients and making sure it’s an ongoing engagement to ensure that we’re looking at the analytics and making changes to make the experience, to continue to make the experience relevant for employees.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
And it makes it a lot fresher too, if you know that there’s gonna be new content and new types of engagement. Alicia, you talked earlier on at the beginning of our conversation about guardrails and ours is a heavily regulated industry. There’s a lot of compliance.
There’s new rules coming out almost, I wouldn’t say every week, but they’re coming out every couple of years, we get new rules, new regulations. How do you ensure that all of this is properly in line with compliance and how do you keep all the data that you’re gathering safe?
Alicia Hartjen, SS&C Technologies
Yeah, so all of this for us, it’s all using SSNC technologies for our AI experiences. So for us, that solves a big piece of the puzzle. But the other piece to it is all of the insights and guidance that Sage provides are pulling from the education and all of that education, it’s always approved by compliance teams anytime it’s changed or a new content is added, compliance teams have an opportunity to review that and they always do.
So we’re able to provide that same level of review over the content itself and then letting our clients have test environments to experience Sage’s responses. And again, Sage is giving responses, but then Sage is directing to education. So that’s really what it’s all about.
And then the other piece to that that I think is important is privacy. So there’s a lot of talk about how do we incorporate an individual’s data into this so that it’s meaningful for them and can individuals opt out of that? And I think there’s really a delicate balance between the value that that data, that I can place on that data as an individual user and what I receive for that data being used.
So if we’re using that data in a meaningful way for Sage to be able to say, hey, I can give you a much more meaningful retirement perspective how you’re doing saving for retirement. If I can use things like your age, your salary and your current balance, I can project where you’re going to be. If you don’t want me to use that data, I’ll still give you guidance on how do you come to that number, but you’re going to have to do it on your own.
And if we can give those choices to individuals so they can choose the value there, I think they’re going to see that the value is there for Sage to be able to do a lot of the heavy lifting around helping an individual understand their circumstances and give them guidance on where they should focus next.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, well, as a consumer, I always want to keep control of my data as much as I can. So giving me an option, certainly really important. Jake, I can’t let you leave.
I can’t close out this interview. Your organization, eBree is the preeminent employee benefit research organization. You create so much great content.
You look at so much data. What’s next on, what’s on tap in terms of financial wellness research that you and the eBree team are going to be conducting?
Jake Spiegel, Employee Benefit Research Institute
Sure, so I think that companies are still looking for the holy grail of tying financial wellness benefits back to an ROI, back to a bottom line, how these financial well-being benefits can actually make companies more profitable, how they can decrease absenteeism and decrease turnover, increase employee retention. Companies are still trying to get their arms around this issue of tying these benefits back to business outcomes. Additionally, I think companies are still trying to figure out how best to reach certain workers.
We find that workers who are desk-based tend to be more likely to enroll in financial well-being benefits than workers that are not entirely desk-based. So I think that another area of research is just figuring out how to tailor messaging, how to best outreach certain employee populations that employers need to reach in order to help increase their financial well-being.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, well, there’s that personalization we were talking about. Alicia, it’s always great to see you. Jake, it’s great to meet you. And look, we look forward to having you both back on the program again very soon. Thanks for having me.
