Aon Hewitt Teams with HelloWallet
HelloWallet, headquartered in Washington, D.C., provides personalized and unbiased guidance to individuals about managing debt, spending wisely and maximizing company benefits. Aon Hewitt expects the partnership with HelloWallet will help clients become more engaged and more successful in managing their finances.
The collaboration pairs HelloWallet’s web and mobile financial guidance software with Aon Hewitt’s benefits administration solutions to provide workers with access to their health and wealth data in an integrated setting. Clients will be able to access data about their retirement plans, health plans, and overall financial wellness within a single portal and using a single password. This should allow clients to better manage their financial lives and make more effective decisions across and beyond the various employer benefits programs they use, Aon Hewitt says.
“Employees must balance many financial needs—from health to education to retirement—and they need tools and resources to look at the big picture when it comes to managing their benefits, long-term savings goals and day-to-day budgeting,” says Alison Borland, vice president of retirement strategy and Solutions at Aon Hewitt. “Our clients understand those demands and are looking beyond traditional retirement behaviors to focus on broad wellness objectives that cross traditional boundaries of employer-provided benefits.”
According to Aon Hewitt, one factor driving employers’ interest in overall wellness is the shift towards a more consumer-centric benefits model, where individuals are given greater control over their benefits decisions. Previous Aon Hewitt research has found around 77% of U.S. employers offer a defined contribution (DC) retirement plan as the primary retirement savings vehicle offered to employees, implying much of the responsibility to save for retirement has shifted from employers to employees. Similarly, more than 56% of employers now offer consumer-driven health plans (CDHP), up from 38% in 2011.
The effectiveness of consumer-driven programs can depend on the underlying basic financial health of workers. HelloWallet research finds 60% of DC participants are accumulating debt at a faster rate than they are building retirement savings, undermining their retirement security. Workers also struggle with managing their portion of health care costs. Aon Hewitt says more than half of workers are confused about how much money to set aside in health savings accounts (HSA).
“Poor financial health has become a barrier to the success of compensation and benefit investments,” says Matt Fellowes, founder and CEO of HelloWallet. “If workers do not know how much they spend on groceries and are spending more than they make every month, they certainly are not going to be able to save effectively for health or retirement.”
More information about the collaboration with Aon Hewitt is available at http://www.aon.com/.
HelloWallet also recently partnered with Vanguard for employee education (see “Vanguard Partners with HelloWallet for Financial Education”).