Agents, brokers and consultants offering benefits education and communication will be affected.
Health benefits take political center stage as executive and legislative candidates argue about the success or failure of Obamacare, but retirement issues are also critical to a wide range of employers.
In the next two years, a series of new regulations will change the way employers and their advisers will administer and communicate retirement benefits. Many of the new regulations will help protect retirement benefits from mishandling and improper reporting, but plan administrators are likely to see them as headaches.
Ever since defined contribution (DC) plans supplanted defined benefit (DB) plans as the dominant retirement plan product in the workplace, the choices available to employees for their plan investments have been mostly stocks and bonds, in multifarious packaging, along with some stable value products. Annuities-the cornerstone financial security product of the defined benefit era-are pretty much absent from today's DC benefits menu.
To be sure, some employee benefit companies, including Prudential and Lincoln National, offer DC plan products that provide guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefits. The use of these products enables employees to retire with a floor of income they cannot outlive, which research has shown to be one of the key preoccupations of new retirees.
MATCHING PRODUCTS WITH NEEDS-ONE EMPLOYEE AT A TIME
MetLife study points to value of one-on-one benefits education, especially for Millennials
We're more than halfway through the decade that will end in 2020-the year in which it is predicted that Millennials will represent almost half of the workforce. Even today, Millennials (ages 21-34) are the largest demographic group of employees. To sustain a loyal workforce, employers know that they must shape their benefits menu with a strong Millennial perspective. Employers must be careful, however, not to stereotype Millennials.
