With the common themes of increasing participant engagement, knowledge and preparation for retirement, a variety of education approaches were on display March 11 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., as Pensions & Investments presented its annual Eddy Awards.
The awards ceremony was part of P&I’s annual Defined Contribution East conference, recognizing 61 campaigns from employers in the private, public and nonprofit sectors and their service providers for their creativity and comprehensiveness in helping workers plan for and enjoy retirement, and build their financial wellness. An additional three campaigns received honorable mentions.
The campaigns were as diverse as the sponsors’ media strategies — from print and email, intranet and videos, to live and/or virtual meetings — or all of the above.
There were six awards categories: conversions/403(b) consolidations; financial wellness; ongoing investment education, pre-retirement preparation; plan transitions and special projects.
For the full list of Eddy winners, click here.
Descriptions of some of the top-winning campaigns are organized by category below:
Pre-retirement Preparation
Responding to employees' concerns about needing more help as they approached retirement, executives at Costco Wholesale, Issaquah, Wash., decided they needed a specific education program to reach those who are 55 and older.
“I want to retire, and I don’t know what to do” was a common comment from employees, said Katherine M. Miller, director of Costco’s benefit department, leading to a collaboration with T. Rowe Price for a multi-channel information campaign. “This was really driven by employees,” Miller said.
The target audience was 38,600 employees ages 55 and over, with 31,200 receiving email and 7,400 receiving a print version of the pre-retirement education campaign. (Costco has a total of 250,000 participants with total plan assets of $42 billion).
The three-step campaign attracted considerable interest based on digital metrics tracked by T. Rowe Price.
The first step was a brochure highlighting tips for retirement readiness. The email had a 53% open rate and 6% click-through rate compared to the record keeper's averages of 43% and 4% respectively,
Next came an email and postcard — in May 2024 — describing T. Rowe Price’s digital retirement income planner that offered tools and resources. The email had a 53% open rate and 7% click-through rate.
The third component, issued in June 2024, was T. Rowe Price’s Social Security Optimizer tool that enabled participants to estimate when to draw on Social Security and how much they could expect to receive. The email had a 49% open rate and 5% click-through rate.
“The amount of information and the way it was laid out is very well done,” one judge said about the campaign, which won second place in the corporate category for plans with more than 1,000 participants. “The campaign was innovative and helpful,” wrote another judge.
Ongoing Investment Education
Educating Sony Corp. of America’s $6 billion 401(k) plan participants on investment lineup changes required not only multiple sources of communication but also a deliberate strategy of providing information over an extended period of time.
“We wanted a long runway before reaching the investment changes” that took effect in late 2023, said Judy Leung, senior benefits manager in describing a four-step approach prepared in conjunction with T. Rowe Price. The campaign ran from February 2023 to October 2023.
Phase one featured emails and webinars providing basic information about investing and asset allocation, or “investing 101,” Leung explained.
The next phase was “investing 201,” a more detailed email and webinar on investing, such as contrasting passive and active investing.
Phase three combined print, email and webinar explanations of the new investment lineup, which included a new tier with active and passive investments.
Sony then followed up with a postcard, email and webinar “to help ensure understanding of the new lineup and awareness of any subsequent updates to individual portfolios,” said Sony’s award application.
Sony placed first in the corporate category for plans with more than 1,000 participants.
“Well-positioned and strategic,” one judge wrote. Another judge had more effusive praise: “It’s engaging, educational, personal, easy to follow and understand. The language is clear and easy to read … It’s obvious there was a lot of planning, strategy and effort behind the scenes."
For Dave Riegelman, the best way to educate new employees about Red Wing Shoe’s retirement benefits was a series of five videos describing the $194 million 401(k) plan’s features as well as general information about retirement planning.
The goal was to encourage recruitment and retention, said Riegelman, a Red Wing retirement plans analyst, acknowledging that retail companies can have high turnover.
His company, based in Red Wing, Minn., with 2,600 401(k) plan participants, can hire between 15 to 20 employees per month, but it also has employees who have been with Red Wing for 50 years.
Red Wing has an ongoing education campaign for existing workers, which includes one-on-one meetings — in person or virtual — with a financial adviser as well as quarterly webinars covering issues such as estate planning and Social Security.
Existing employees are welcome to view the five videos, but the videos are mandatory for new workers.
“We want to drive action” with the videos, Riegelman said. “I’m not doing my job if I just do it for you.”
He likened his retirement education philosophy to driver education. “At some point, I can’t drive the car for you.”
Each video provided information on how to contact a financial planner as well as information available from the call center at Transamerica, the company’s service provider.
Red Wing kept the videos short, enabling employees to learn at their own pace. There was no voice-over, so employees could view the videos in setting ranging from an office to a break room, according to the Eddy Awards application.
The videos contained some shoe-related branding: an illustration of compounding used illustrations of a boot growing larger over time.
Since March 2024, at least 10% of employees had reviewed a video, and some have reviewed all five, according to the company's Eddy Awards application. Through August 2024, there was a 35% year-over-year increase in appointments with a third party financial adviser, who appeared in each video, the application said.
The “broad educational context (was) well crafted,” one judge wrote. “The videos did a great job of breaking down complex concepts into easy-to-follow, solid statements,” another judge wrote.
Red Wing placed second in the corporate category for plans with 1,000 or more participants.
For an encore, Red Wing will provide a new series of retirement videos during the first quarter of 2025 for all employees.
With 58,000 participants working in five states, Intermountain Health, Murray, Utah, had to use multiple strategies to educate employees in 33 hospitals and 385 clinics about a new custom target-date series for its $6.8 billion 401(k) plan.
Crafting and executing the campaign took more than 12 months and included print, video, webinars and FAQs, said Scott Olsen, director of retirement plans, which worked with service provider T. Rowe Price.
The three pages of FAQs range from the basic, such as what is a target-date investment, to the detailed, such as target-date fund expense ratios.
The multichannel education campaign was necessary because “we tried to understand our diverse workforce and meet their different needs,” Olsen said.
The challenge was explaining to employees how a new custom target-date series would work after a 2022 merger between Intermountain Health and SCL Health and the 2023 merger of their retirement plans.
Intermountain had a risk-based portfolio, which it retains, of five investing strategies ranging from conservative to aggressive. SCL Health had an off-the-shelf target-date series that was replaced by the custom target-date series. Employees in the merged company can choose either approach, or they can pursue a do-it-yourself investment strategy.
Last year, the campaign led to an increase in 401(k) plan participation to 90.04% from 86.24%, Olsen said.
Target-date usage increased by 38.8% between January and September. The risk-based portfolio usage rose by 4%.
“The campaign offers a lot of great information about why, how and when to invest,” one judge wrote. “It’s detailed, and it breaks down complex concepts into easily understood action items.”
Intermountain Health placed first in the not-for-profit/other category.
Plan Transitions
Concerned that employees were weren’t effectively planning for retirement officials at Gonzaga University, Spokane, Wash., spent nearly a year developing an investment strategy aimed at providing lifetime income.
The university swapped out a target-date series from TIAA-CREF, its record keeper, for another target date series, TIAA RetirePlus Pro, a custom product that embeds a fixed income annuity and gives the university more flexibility, such as adding its own underlying investments. CAPTRUST manages the custom target-date series.
“A lot of participants weren’t paying close enough attention to their retirement accounts," said Lisa Schwartzenburg, assistant vice president for human resources operations for the $526.1 million 403(b) plan, which covers approximately 2,700 participants.
“They were either too risky or too conservative.”
The target-date series also provided flexibility for participants. They aren’t locked into an annuity, said Schwartzenburg, making a distinction between an annuity product and the opportunity to annuitize.
Previously, the plan offered a stand-alone annuity product. It is still available.
The university conducted an RFP for the target-date series, settling on TIAA RetirePlus Pro. Participants were mapped into the new target-date series from the old one.
Seeking to make sure participants were “actively engaged” in choosing the target-date series, “we had an active election asking everyone in the plan to make a choice to opt into the target-date series or to opt out,” Schwartzenburg said.
Only 9% decided against the target-date series, which is fewer than Gonzaga officials had expected. Those opting out preferred to create their own strategy based on their existing investments.
Gonzaga communicated the changes via a total compensation fair, which covered all university benefits, as well as webinars encouraging participants to seek in-person retirement advice and weekly "digital office hours," in which university representatives answered questions about the investment transition. The university issued a detailed transition guide describing plan changes as well as providing links to online resources.
Gonzaga provided “a great transitional guide” with “great promotional information,” one judge wrote.
The university placed first in the not-for-profit/other category for plans with more than 1,000 participants.
Financial Wellness
The Walt Disney Co. has offered financial wellness education in the past, but the campaign between February 2024 and April 2024 reflected a greater effort to reach the approximately 140,000 participants in two 401(k) plans with combined assets over $16 billion.
“We took more of an analytical approach to this work by leveraging employee survey data — both our own and that of our vendors — in order to better understand our employees’ needs,” explained Riddhi Patel, director of U.S. retirement programs, benefits policies and segment support, in an email response to questions.
“We also continually look at external market research to understand industry trends and keep up with the latest in the legislation like SECURE 2.0, in order to leverage opportunities to enhance our programs,” Patel added.
A signature element of the campaign was a personalized video that reviewed a participant’s income, age, deferral rate and account balance to show the impact of what an additional 1% deferral into their 401(k) balance at retirement.
“This personalization demonstrated the power of savings in an impactful way for employees,” Patel said.
Disney officials found that emails tended to be the most effective form of communication, but print and digital information were used to reach employees in their work areas and via the company intranet, Patel said.
Disney used a series of emails to highlight specific financial wellness issues.
The first email identified financial resources and tools for managing money and building savings with a link to one-on-one financial consulting and banking services through a credit union.
The second email focused on tools for short-term and long-term savings. The third email emphasize the role of the 401(k) plan, discussing the employer match, contribution rates and balances.
The campaign also introduced a student debt match program linked to the 401(k) plan.
“The biggest impact we have seen has been an increase in our hourly plan participation,” Patel said. “We continue to monitor other metrics like program engagement, employee sentiment and beneficiary designations to better understand what our employees need.”
According to Disney’s award application, 20% of participants who viewed the videos increased their 401(k) plan contributions.
The Walt Disney Co. placed first in the corporate category for plans with more than 5,000 participants.
“The materials are presented in a fun way that appears to reflect corporate culture,” one judge wrote.
Officials of ChristianaCare and its record keeper, Lincoln Financial, noticed that some employees would start saving for retirement but then request loans and hardship withdrawals.
Concerned about the long-term impact of impairing savings, ChristianaCare settled on promoting critical illness insurance, hospital indemnity insurance and accident insurance as a way to ease participants concerns about tapping into their retirement savings, said Mark LoGiudice, senior manager of benefits and wellness.
ChristianaCare and Lincoln Financial held online and onsite benefits fairs in May 2024, leading to greater insurance purchases after open enrollment vs. before open enrollment.
It took about six months to plan ChristianaCare’s selection and implementation of its insurance strategy, whose communication efforts included informational flyers as well as web-based information via QR codes and videos about the various supplemental health benefits.
“I thought the videos were very creative, humorous and relatable,” one judge wrote.
Wilmington, Del.-based ChristianaCare manages three hospitals as well as outpatient facilities. The 403(b) plan has $1.8 billion in assets and covers 13,400 active retirement plan participants.
ChristianaCare hasn’t changed its loan policy. Participants can have two loans outstanding.
“We are looking at emergency savings” via the provisions in SECURE 2.0, but there is no timetable for action, LoGiudice said.
ChristianaCare placed first in the not-for-profit/other category for plans with more than 5,000 participants.
Although Emmes Group, Rockville, Md., had offered financial wellness education in the past, “we wanted something more dedicated,” explained Janice Warren, senior manager for U.S. benefits and wellness.
The company’s $203 million 401(k) plan began using the ProsperWise platform, developed by the plan’s adviser, Marsh & McLennan Agency, helping raise the plan participation rate to 96% compared to 89% before the platform was offered on Jan. 1, 2024.
Budgeting, college savings and unlimited financial coaching are part of the services which are provided through webinars and monthly newsletters.
“Our employees are always asking for more education,” Warren said. “We want to enhance our employees’ knowledge.” The wellness platform also can be used by families.
Since the platform’s launch, there have been 4,330 page views on the platform; 460 participants attended financial wellness webinars; and 65 participated in financial coaching sessions
“The number of users on the website has grown from 108 since launch to over 683 as of Jan. 31,” Warren said.
Separate from the wellness platform, Emmes Group raised its auto-enrollment deferral rate to 6% from 3% in July 2024. It also raised the limit for auto-escalation to 15% from 10%. The auto-escalation rate remains at 1% per year.
Emmes Group placed first in the corporate category for plans with 1,000 to 5,000 participants.
“Their use of the monthly newsletters is a great way to keep employees informed and engaged,” one judge wrote. “Great tools for budgeting (and) school scholarships,” another judge wrote.
Conversions/403(b) Consolidations
Securian Financial had been managing its retirement plan record keeping internally for decades, but it sold the business to Standard Insurance Co. and chose, in 2023, Principal Financial as the record keeper for its defined contribution, defined benefit and nonqualified plans.
“It was a huge undertaking,” said Jeffery Streeper, consulting director for benefits, coordinating all plans under one record-keeping roof.
As of Sept. 30, Securian’s DC plan had $987 million in assets, DB plan assets were $1.3 billion, and nonqualified plan assets were $127 million.
The project took 18 months and required an RFP. Securian chose Principal because “we were impressed by the technology and the integration” of the three plans under one record-keeping roof, Streeper said.
Moving the plans to Principal featured a “complete revamp of the investment structure,” Securian’s awards application stated. The Principal platform offered new tools, resources and online calculators.
The communications campaign was conducted through 2023, featuring a town hall meeting and a multi-channel approach to educating participants.
The campaign included an FAQ answering questions about the new record keeper’s benefits, an FAQ for participants with loans to explain how they would work under the new system, emails and letters offering links to plan information.
After the conversion, Principal representatives conducted on-site breakfast events. They conducted webinars for participants who worked remotely from Securian’s St. Paul, Minn., headquarters and onsite meetings at the headquarters.
“This campaign is thorough and clearly laid out,” one judge wrote.
After the conversion, the DC plan participation rate rose to 85% from 79%.
Securian took first place in the corporate category for plans with 1,000 to 5,000 participants.
When the SchoolsFirst Federal Credit Union, Tustin, Calif., officials looked at their 403(b) and 457(b) plans, they realized that over the years the number of investment options had ballooned to 368 and that there was plenty of room for improving technology and services.
Improvement came in the form of changing its record-keeping platform, a process that took 18 months from the initial idea to the launch.
“There were a lot of moving parts,” said Cristian Lopez, manager, SchoolsFirst Retirement Planning.
The biggest challenge, Lopez said, was communicating the changes to 44,100 participants in more than 250 school districts in California. The changes included a new website and a slimmed down lineup of 56 investments.
SchoolsFirst had worked with Nationwide Insurance for 25 years, and it decided to convert from one Nationwide record-keeping platform to another following an RFP.
“Nationwide is very customer-service based,” said Lopez, whose plan, the SchoolsFirst Retirement Builder Plan, won second place in the not-for-profit/other category for plans with more than 1,000 participants.
Changes to the website included a discussion of benefits and different strategies for the 403(b) and 457(b) plans, which had combined assets of $2.6 billion as of June 30.
The communication campaign combined email and regular mail, and it made sure to reach out to decision-makers in each school district, such as principals, superintendents and well-regarded teachers, Lopez said. These individuals were identified as having influence and credibility with employees.
The campaign emphasized a personal touch. The new website incorporated participants’ photos and contained educational content specific to individual needs.
A series of emails were aimed at specific audiences, such as people with outstanding loans, those investing in managed accounts and those with specific investment options to receive additional information.
There was “robust messaging” with “clearly outlined important dates and information provided for someone to easily access their account,” one judge wrote.
Special Projects
When the city of Austin, Texas, issued a record-keeping RFP in 2023, it gave the incumbent, Empower, the opportunity to re-bid for the city’s 457(b) plan.
Five candidates applied. Empower won a five-year contract with the possibility of two one-year extensions — but only after Empower agreed to provide more services.
“We wanted open architecture,” said Gail Ray, financial manager in the city’s financial management department. “We wanted financial planning services at no additional cost. We wanted to go from one local representative to two local representatives.”
All of these features were “deal breakers,” Ray said.
“Neither point-in-time investment advice nor financial planning services were previously provided by the record keeper,” she said. “If participants needed this type of service, they had to find a financial adviser on their own.”
Adding a second local representative cut down the waiting time for participants seeking financial information.
One local rep could hold 600 to 850 meetings per year; two reps could conduct more than 1,900 meetings. And the city convinced Empower to waive the cost of providing financial advice over the phone, a service usually linked to managed accounts.
“We don’t want managed accounts, so they offered this for free,” she said.
The new services were presented in videos in city employee newsletters, emails, a reusable tote bag and contact cards with QR codes to help participants schedule appointments with local representatives,
“There was clean, clear messaging,” wrote one judge. “It was a very appealing campaign.”
Another judge praised the comprehensiveness of the campaign to provide investment information and consultations. “Videos capture and maintained your attention,” the judge wrote.
The city of Austin tied for second place in the special projects category covering public plans with more than 5,000 participants. It shared the award with the State of Missouri Deferred Compensation Plan.
The challenge to Memorial Healthcare System, Hollywood, Fla., was communicating changes for its 403(b), 401(a) and 457(b) plans to employees who worked long hours via multiple shift changes.
“We needed to modernize our plans and increase effectiveness, engagement and awareness,” said D. Scott Crutcher, director, total rewards: retirement, pension and deferred compensation administration. The plans have combined assets of $1.95 billion.
“We needed to make things more employee-friendly,” Crutcher said.
The changes included adding after-tax Roth features to the 403(b) and 457(b) plans; lowering to vesting schedule to three years from five years for the 403(b) plan; and increasing the annual employer contribution to 3% from 2.5% for some 401(a) plan members.
Approximately 1,200 participants chose the Roth approach in one year, investing approximately $8.5 million, Crutcher said. “I had hoped for $5 million in year one.”
Memorial, and its service provider Transamerica, conducted an education campaign from November 2023 through mid-February 2024, unveiling a web page promoted as one-stop shopping for investment education and the plans’ changes.
The web page enabled employees to arrange appointments with retirement planning consultants — either in-person or virtually. One-on-one appointments increased by 25% over a corresponding period prior to the campaign.
The overall participation rate rose to 82.4% from 81%.
Memorial provided “impactful and robust communications,” one judge wrote.
“This was a good strategy of email communications, mailer and newsletter,” another judge wrote.
Memorial Healthcare System tied for second in the not-for-profit/other category for plans with more than 5,000 participants. It shared the award with the Seventh Day Adventist Church North American Division (Empower).
The state of Maryland stopped making matching contributions to participants in the public employees 401(a) plan in 2009. The long-term impact on participants, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic and a weakened economy in 2022, was decreased or suspended contributions as well as more loans and hardship withdrawals.
To increase participant contributions and participation, the state enacted a law effective July 1, 2023, offering a $600 match on a dollar-for-dollar contribution basis.
The law’s passage was only part of the story: The Maryland Teachers and State Employees Supplemental Retirement Plans, Baltimore, had only eight weeks — from the April passage to the July 1 effectiveness date — to develop an education campaign for taking advantage of state appropriations, explained Tonya Toler, director of member services
The challenge was compounded by the fact that Maryland was basically starting from scratch.
“There was no paper trail” from the previous match policy, she said. “We were scrounging and looking for data.”
Aside from implementing the match, Maryland sought to restart contributions from participants who had stopped adding to their accounts, help those who are ineligible for the match to see the benefits of supplemental retirement plans and assemble technology resources to make the match proceed smoothly.
To qualify for a 401(a) match, a participant must contribute to a state 457(b), 403(b) or 401(k) plan. Aggregate assets for the plans are $5.3 billion.
The education campaign with a theme of “Catch The Match” was a mixture of in-person presentations and webinars — a total of 28 webinars attended by 3,320 employees.
Email blasts, messages appended to participants’ financial statements and placed in the system’s magazine and on various websites contributed to the education efforts.
As a result, 2,634 participants resumed contributing.
Enrollments increased, as did contributions. Plan participation rose to 73% after the program concluded vs.70% before it started.
“I really liked that they didn’t just email,” one judge wrote. “They had newsletters, postcards, emails and posters in high traffic areas.”
Another judge praised the campaign for providing “relatable examples” as a way to incentivize people to enroll in the plan or increase their contributions.
The Maryland Teachers and State Employees Supplemental Retirement Plans tied for first place in the category for public plans with more than 5,000 participants. Nationwide is the service provider. Maryland shared the award with the Employees Retirement System of Texas (Empower).
