Charles Schwab

Rebecca Clark, Margarita Hughes, Katie Lee and Becky Pickthall used a popular company event to promote a retirement readiness tool

From Left to Right: Rebecca Clark, relationship manager; Margarita Hughes, communication consultant; Katie Lee, senior client manager; and Becky Pickthall, client service specialist

Client: A Silicon Valley technology company
Client Industry: Telecommunications
Client Headquarters: San Francisco area, California
Plan Assets/Participants: >$500mm–$1b/4,000
Bios: Rebecca Clark, relationship manager. Clark joined Schwab in 2017 and has been in the industry for over 12 years. In partnering with her clients, she brings timely thought leadership on broader trends relating to retirement and plan design to guide plan sponsors in their decision making and support their long-term business objectives. Prior to joining Schwab, Clark worked for The Vanguard Group.

Katie Lee, senior client service manager. Lee joined Schwab in 2016 and has been in the industry for over 15 years. She brings administrative expertise to her clients assisting them in building efficiencies to help with day-to-day plan operations to support long-term business objectives. Prior to joining Schwab, Lee worked for MassMutual.

Margarita Hughes, communication consultant. Hughes joined Schwab in 2014 and has more than 16 years of experience in financial services, including 10 years working with plan sponsors and participants utilizing defined contribution (DC) and nonqualified plans. Prior to joining Schwab, Hughes worked for Empower and prior to that was with an investment consultant firm.

Becky Pickthall, client service specialist. Pickthall joined Schwab in 2013 and has been in the financial industry for 11 years. At Schwab, she assisted participants with their accounts on an individual basis in Participant Services before moving to Client Services to support plan sponsors with plan administration and reporting requirements. Prior to joining Schwab, Pickthall worked for The Vanguard Group and Deutsche Bank. 

For one Silicon Valley semi-conductor company, excitement peaks at the time of its annual ping-pong tournament—a fact that Charles Schwab decided to leverage in a twofold strategy: launch a new retirement readiness tool while promoting the tech firm’s 401(k) plan.


Working with the plan sponsor and her colleagues, Schwab coordinated introducing its My Retirement Progress (MRP) tool with the tournament. “The MRP allows participants to include outside retirement assets and change contribution rates to get a picture of what their savings could look like at retirement,” the sponsor explains. “As participants input data and see results, they have the ability to take action right away, such as increasing their deferral rate or connecting with Schwab for a personalized advice consultation.“

The effort required a six-month commitment, from the initial conversations through the rollout. Key to engaging participants was to align the communications about the plan and the tool with the upcoming games. For example, Schwab integrated the company’s ping-pong images and used a play on words in the concept tagline: “Some moments come at you fast—others like retirement are years in the making.” Messages were delivered through various media including several of the employer’s internal channels.

While on-site during the tournament, the Schwab team visited with almost 300 participants. “And in the first month after, we saw a total of 157 employees interact with the MRP tool online; of those, 10% increased their deferrals.” Since the promotion, engagement with the MRP has continued to increase, says the team, adding that the tool will be central to ongoing communications with the company.

The plan sponsor says the experiment of combining the tournament and the launch was “unique and very well-received. Schwab created a strategy that got the employees’ attention, and it continued to get their attention through themed giveaways and its on-site presence.”

The rest of the tech company’s benefits team was so impressed by the employee engagement, in fact, that “they’ll be using company events to promote their programs going forward,” the sponsor says.

E_DEPRECATED Error in file nav-menu-template.php at line 533: Creation of dynamic property WP_Post::$current_item_parent is deprecated