Helping Plan Sponsors Power Retirement Readiness for Middle America

Despite industry consolidation and the growing trend toward outsourcing, Transamerica has remained committed to serving retirement plan sponsors and helping participants prepare for retirement. PLANSPONSOR sat down with Gregg Holgate, head of inforce management and client engagement; Luke Stroh, head of retirement operations; and Darren Zino, head of retirement distribution, at Transamerica, to ask about how the firm partners with employers to improve retirement outcomes for their participants.

PLANSPONSOR: What plan design and participant outcome priorities do you see among retirement plan sponsors?

Gregg Holgate: Obviously, SECURE [Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement] 2.0 has been at the forefront for plan sponsors over the past year or so. Adopting some of those provisions has been a tactical necessity, while some are a nice-to-have. But, largely, plan sponsors’ priorities over the longer term have not changed. It all comes back to the core goals to take care of employees and help participants get to retirement.

Transamerica has great success with employers that see themselves as stewards of their employees’ well-being, especially in terms of their benefits programs and helping employees maximize the value of their retirement plan. It’s a sentiment we often see in health care and manufacturing organizations.

We’re also seeing larger employers explore pooled employer plans—breaking from conventional wisdom of who we thought would consider them.

Darren Zino: To that point, I think there’s a misconception that the larger plans want more sophistication and only small plans are interested in streamlining. In reality, plan sponsors of all sizes want solutions that are easier to administer and easy for employees to engage with. They want to deliver a streamlined experience for employees through technology—but not at the cost of human connection.

Luke Stroh: I agree with all of that, and it’s our sweet spot—the ability to provide tailored solutions no matter the client size, whether co-sponsoring a PEP or sponsoring a single-employer plan.

PLANSPONSOR: How does your service philosophy support these needs while helping to attract and retain recordkeeping clients?

Holgate: Our client executive team is out there every day listening to clients trying to uncover their needs. Clients don’t necessarily know what solutions are available to them. One example was a client who had always used paper forms for participant loans and saw no reason to change. But when we showed them how a streamlined, modern approach would be more efficient, they eagerly embraced the transition away from paper.

Stroh: The client executive team—our relationship managers—share client feedback internally with all areas of the business. Collectively, we use that feedback and our different viewpoints to improve processes and ways of working together to make a difference for our clients.

Zino: The industry seems to have moved to a position that whatever is most efficient for it is also best for plan sponsors. You can’t walk into a room with a solution before asking any questions. For example, we know Pooled Solutions are not right for every situation. I wish more in the industry would get back to what Luke and Gregg were talking about—having conversations and getting to know clients. It’s easy to fall into only what you do well and think that’s what works for everyone. Plan sponsors need what works for them.

PLANSPONSOR: How does Transamerica partner with organizations to help employees prepare for retirement?

Holgate: Our approach is multilayered and human-first. We have 85 retirement planning consultants meeting with employees virtually and in-person. We have technology that is second to none, including website retirement calculators and managed account solutions that participants can opt in to. Along with our call center, we offer an advice center with 200 trained specialists to help participants decide what to do with their retirement account when they change jobs or retire.

Stroh: It’s about giving participants the help they need when they need it. We have no canned or boxed solutions like those we’re increasingly seeing in the industry. We have specialists trained to address unique, personal situations.

Zino: Our goal is to make things easier for participants to make good decisions about their retirement, so we offer a lot of options. We have traditional target-date funds and a solution to build a custom TDF. We have a managed account solution, and we’ll be rolling out an income solution. We need to offer a variety of options because every participant is different. And we also believe in the value of people, our employees, who can help explain options to plan participants.

PLANSPONSOR: How does Transamerica help participants understand whether they are on target to replace enough income in retirement?

Zino: We have a tool called OnTrack that helps them understand how they’re doing with their retirement saving. It shows them how likely they are to save enough for retirement based on a given strategy. We make it simple, using weather icons that are easy for participants to understand—and our participant website was recognized for its clarity and design.

OnTrack has a slide tool that allows participants to model changes to their retirement outlook. For example, if their retirement readiness shows “partly cloudy” and they want it to be sunnier, they can use the slider to change the amount they’re contributing to see how that will change their future outcome.

We all know that we can give participants information, but if tools are too hard to use, no one will benefit from them. I feel like we’ve done a very nice job of not only giving them the tool, but making it easy to get where they want to go.

PLANSPONSOR: What are Transamerica’s thoughts about providers outsourcing recordkeeping services or merging with other recordkeeping firms?

Stroh: We’ve seen consolidation in the industry for years, and we’re also seeing outsourcing of recordkeeping. But our real focus is maintaining human boots on the ground. Of course, we look for opportunities to scale and have flexibility, but we do it in a way that doesn’t affect client support and allows us to have conversations.

Zino: We own our recordkeeping system; we don’t outsource. We’re proud of its capabilities, especially in terms of flexibility that allows us to efficiently manage even very complex plans. Aegon, the parent company of Transamerica, has decided to invest in key opportunities for growth in the U.S., and a key one is for Transamerica to become the leading middle-market financial services provider.

The greatest way to do that is through workplace retirement plans. And we don’t get caught up in the size of a plan; we serve startups, mega plans and everything in between.

The majority of working Americans are in an employer-sponsored retirement plan, and, now, with the SECURE Act, it’s easier for smaller employers to offer a plan. Transamerica has decided the retirement plan industry is the field we want to play in and the business we want to be in.

Holgate: Simply put, we are firmly committed to the retirement plan space and our mandate is to grow, so we’re more likely to acquire than to be acquired.

Important: The projections or other information generated by the engine (which produces Your Retirement Outlook®) regarding the likelihood of various investment outcomes are hypothetical, do not reflect actual investment results, and are not guarantees of future results. Results derived from the tool may vary with each use and over time. Securities offered through Transamerica Investors Securities, LLC (TIS), member FINRA, 440 Mamaroneck Avenue, Harrison, NY 10528.

Sponsored by