Transamerica Retirement Solutions LLC

“In 2018, St. Luke’s acquired two different hospitals, and Transamerica helped us with these two new entities,” says Sharon Cavanaugh, assistant vice president of pension administration for St. Luke’s University Health Network. “Transamerica assisted with the termination of the plans in those two hospitals and the seamless transition of their participants being able to join our plans. Transamerica achieved this by developing a program to map their existing deferral decisions to our payroll system. [The company] did this by accepting a contribution file from these other hospitals for seven months until we got them set up in our records. The acquisitions occurred on January 1, 2018, and March 1, 2018, and, throughout 2018, Transamerica worked with us on wrapping up those acquisitions. In the meanwhile, these 2,000 employees never skipped a beat when it came to their retirement savings. Transamerica proved to us it’s as important to [Transamerica] as it is to us to help people save for retirement.”

As to how Transamerica was able to accomplish this, client executive Jacque Clouser says, “Even though these were two significant mergers, we were able to handle them because Transamerica has a good process in place for when there are mergers and acquisitions [M&As] at clients. We make sure we are part of the time-sensitive processes as soon as we can possibly be. We ensure we accomplish each necessary task in the right order so that the client has as many options available to them as possible.”

In fact, Clouser adds, St. Luke’s has another acquisition in the wings. With all of these transactions, she says, communication is critical.

Senior Client Consultant Suzanne Sweet adds: “These mergers were two of the smoothest transactions we have ever handled. Internally, we have a great team that created a project plan with a tight schedule. It also greatly helped that the client was very responsive and quickly kept things moving.”

Transamerica was also at the center of St. Luke’s effort to introduce automatic enrollment at a 6% deferral rate at the beginning of last year, Cavanaugh says.

—Lee Barney