T. Rowe Price Group on Tuesday said it would transfer responsibility for its retirement technology development and core operations to Fidelity National Information Services, a company that has provided T. Rowe Price's defined contribution record-keeping platform for 30 years.
The transition will take effect Aug. 1.
T. Rowe Price, Baltimore, took the action to deliver services to sponsors and participants at "an accelerated rate," Kevin Collins, head of retirement services at T. Rowe Price, said in an interview.
"We were looking to see where clients' and participants' expectations would be in the future," said Mr. Collins, describing a review process that began in 2019.
The company started searching for a partner in early 2020. "We looked at a variety of options to make sure we had the right partner," he said.
Working with Jacksonville, Fla.-based FIS will enable T. Rowe Price to better focus on providing more services that affect not only traditional retirement products and services but also health savings accounts, emergency savings assistance, debt management and other "holistic" services for participants, Mr. Collins said. "It will be our strategy and our design," he said.
A news release Tuesday cited FIS' technology expertise that would help T. Rowe Price modernize record keeping, provide additional retirement income options, offer new digital payment services, and add financial wellness services and products.
The agreement means 800 T. Rowe Price employees, or about 10% of the company workforce, are being offered the same technology and operations roles with FIS as they have with T. Rowe Price. They will remain in the T. Rowe Price offices in Owings Mills, Md., and Colorado Springs, Colo., offices.
Dominic Cipolla, head of operations at T. Rowe Price, and Stacy Scarff, head of technology at T. Rowe Price, will take similar jobs at FIS, Mr. Collins said.
"We concluded that expanding our partnership with FIS would best accelerate the transformation of the business and support scalable growth for the long term," Bill Stromberg, CEO of T. Rowe Price, said in the Tuesday news release.
T. Rowe Price is the second giant investment manager to outsource its DC record-keeping technology. In July, Vanguard Group, Malvern, Pa., said Infosys would assume daily technology operations for record keeping. The agreement meant that 1,300 Vanguard employees would take similar jobs at Infosys and that Martha King, managing director and head of Vanguard's institutional investor group, would join India-based Infosys as chief client officer.