Empower Retirement to Offer Integrated Digital Financial Experience
The offering will integrate multiple financial accounts of an individual into one snapshot.
Empower Retirement, the second largest retirement services provider, with more than 12 million participants, is planning a website that will integrate elements of a person’s finances into one complete picture of their financial life.
The new “digital experience,“ which Empower expects to begin offering later this year, will include not only an individual’s estimated retirement income but also their net worth via links to outside savings, retirement, checking, credit card and brokerage accounts, as well to loans and 529 investment accounts — all combined into a single snapshot.
“Empower has designed this new experience to help drive more information into the hands of individuals so they can work with their advisors to achieve their goals,” said the firm’s president and CEO, Edmund F. Murphy III, in a statement. “We recognize that most people have multiple goals in addition to retirement. This comprehensive and holistic approach enables us to better serve their full financial needs.”
Individuals will have the choice to link the digital experience to outside accounts or simply use it as a stand-alone for their Empower retirement account. In addition, individuals will be able to talk with an Empower advisor for help. An Empower spokesman said neither individual plan participants nor plan sponsors will be charged an additional fee for the expanded offering.
Empower’s pending digital experience builds on the combined experience and technology of Empower and Personal Capital, the RIA and hybrid wealth management that Empower acquired in 2020. The new offering “represents the first stage in a more robust integration of financial technology and know-how between the firms,” according to an Empower press release.
Since that acquisition, Empower has also acquired the retirement plan business of MassMutual and the recordkeeping business of SunTrust 401(k), and it has entered into a definitive agreement with Fifth Third Bank to acquire 476 retirement plans, providing recordkeeping and administrative services while Fifth Third continues in a plan-level investment advisory capacity for most of the plans.
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