Success Story: Education

Many business owners treat their employees like family and take a personal interest in their future. This company has workers who are seasoned, long-term employees, and the business owners wanted to serve their “employee family” the way their employees serve their customers.

This company was experiencing two common sore spots for 401(k) plan sponsors—low employee participation/engagement and spending too much time on plan administration.

As part of our common business practice, we assigned the client a Retirement Counselor, a dedicated point of contact for the company 401(k) plan. The Retirement Counselor starts with the business at the plan conversion stage and continues as their primary point of contact throughout the relationship. The Retirement Counselor, backed by the Employee 401(k) Support Team, quickly converted their old plan to the new one. And they continue to support the plan, allowing the business to focus on other important projects while we help with the day-to-day administrative 401(k) tasks.

The Retirement Counselor worked with the business owners to create a customized enrollment day and the Retirement Counselor and Service Team traveled to the company’s primary location to present the new 401(k) plan to their employees. This included answering questions in one-on-one enrollment meetings with each employee.

But—for a maritime business, a one-time single location enrollment meeting wasn't going to reach enough of their employees. Some of the employees were at sea and unable to come into port for a meeting. So, we worked with the business to schedule on-ship meetings with groups of employees to enroll them in the 401(k) plan and continue their retirement education. In person, personal, on location, on-their-schedule meetings. 

A Fisher Investments 401(k) Solutions enrollment day is unlike any other, and we prove it: Companies that we work with see employee enrollment rates increase by 55% and employee deferral rate increases of 100%.*

* Fisher 401(k) Solutions enrollment data as of 1/1/2019. Based on the average net change of plan participant rates pre- and post-plan conversion to the Fisher 401(k) Solutions platform, which is recorded after a Fisher 401(k) Solutions onsite enrollment meeting.

SEC Regulatory Disclaimer: Case studies are selected based on how they illustrate common 401(k) plan goals. It is not known whether the clients approve or disapprove of Fisher Investments 401(k) Solutions or the services provided.