New technology helps advisors and consultants display retirement plan modifications in real time

Empower Retirement today announced that it will launch PlanVisualizer^™, a powerful interactive technology that enables retirement advisors and consultants to demonstrate to plan sponsors how some modifications in plan design can impact their employees' retirement readiness, pinpoint progress, and forecast plan contribution expenses.

The new offering, which will be available through Empower's advisor web site, is aimed at helping plan sponsors consider how possible changes to their plan -- such as employer match, auto enrollment and rate of auto escalation, among others -- can impact their employees' retirement prospects.

"The ultimate goal of every retirement plan is to replace income in retirement," said Empower President Edmund F. Murphy III. "PlanVisualizer is designed to help employers better see and understand how the design of their plan can help employees achieve that goal."

Available through the broader retirement advisor and consultant market, PlanVisualizer provides plan sponsors with a multi-dimensional, holistic view of their retirement plan in its current state, along with the ability to model how changes to key design elements can potentially affect participant preparedness and how changes to the plan might impact matching costs for the employer.

The new technology utilizes a core set of anonymous data points supplied by the advisor or consultant - including employees' ages, salaries, retirement plan balances and contribution rates - to provide plan sponsors with customized insight across demographic segments, including a directional sense of participants' current trajectory to replace income in retirement. PlanVisualizer makes use of Empower proprietary data which utilizes multiple individual and actuarial data points to show individuals a score of how they are faring toward income replacement in retirement.

"Advisors and consultants can employ this technology to communicate the effect of retirement plan design changes in real time," Murphy noted. "Empower has made PlanVisualizer available to all advisors and consultants - regardless of client status and free of charge - because we believe strongly in helping every employer optimize their retirement plans for their workforce."

PlanVisualizer is part of Empower's advisor-centric approach to serving the growing market for defined contribution retirement services. Since its formation in 2014, Empower has received some of the highest favorability marks in the industry from advisors across the country. In the last two years Empower has worked with some 30,000 plan advisors to serve the needs of plan sponsor clients.

PlanVisualizer will also be offered by Putnam Investments to assist advisors and consultants in serving their clients. In recent years, Putnam has received sweeping industry accolades for FundVisualizer^®, a free investment analysis tool that enables advisors, brokers and other intermediaries to evaluate and compare more than 30,000 mutual funds, exchange-traded funds and indexes using more than 80 performance and risk metrics.

IMPORTANT: The projections generated by PlanVisualizer^™ are hypothetical in nature. There is no guarantee of future results and the results are not a guarantee of actual outcomes and will change as inputs change. The results may vary with each use and over time.

About Empower Retirement

Headquartered in metro Denver, Empower Retirement administers $529 billion in assets for more than 8.3 million participants. It is the nation’s second-largest retirement plan record keeper by total participants (Pensions & Investments, April, 2017). Empower serves all segments of the employer-sponsored retirement plan market: government 457 plans, small, midsize, and large corporate 401(k) clients, non-profit 403(b) entities and private-label recordkeeping clients. For more information, please visit www.Empower-retirement.com.

As of Dec. 31, 2017. Information refers to all retirement business of Great-West Life & Annuity Insurance Company and its subsidiaries and affiliates, including Great-West Life & Annuity Insurance Company of New York, marketed under the Empower Retirement brand.

Media Contact:

Stephen Gawlik — 303-737-0899 (office), 617-417-4408 (cell)

Learn More

To learn more about how we’re empowering plan sponsors and their participants to be more engaged in their retirement plans than ever before, call us at 800-719-9914.