Must Reads

INVESTMENTS

‘Pensionize’ 401(k)s and IRAs In a world of defined contributions, American workers have three challenges – inadequate savings, leakage (or loans/early withdrawals) tied to their retirement accounts and the need for retirement income. Plus, just half of all DC plans offer a way for investors to transform balances into periodic retirement income, with only one in five offering guaranteed lifetime payouts.

This situation prompted Steve Vernon of the Stanford Center on Longevity, Wade Pfau of The American College of Financial Services and researcher Joe Tomlinson to explore and devise solutions to “pensionize” retirement plans. Their work, first published last year and then updated this year, finds that only one-third of workers contact financial advisors, and most lack the necessary skills to convert savings into retirement income and typically have short planning horizons.

But research from the Stanford Center on Longevity (SCL) and Society of Actuaries (SOA) has found a “straightforward retirement strategy,” according to the three authors. “Choosing a specific solution that will help workers generate retirement income requires them to make informed tradeoffs between potentially competing goals,” they explained, such as “maximizing lifetime income; providing access to savings (liquidity); planning for bequests;

EMPLOYEE BENEFITS

Fighting Financial Stress

A good financial wellness pro gram should include components that are relevant to each generation’s particular points of pain, with solutions delivered in a comfortably accessed format. Any number of financial pressures are weighing down employees these days, posing a troublesome burden across age groups jobs and income categories.

If it’s not student loan debt for millennials (and their elders and those behind them, too) that’s creating problems, it’s the juggling by Gen Xers to help mom and dad out, save for Junior’s college, mortgage and car loan, and paying for the emergency dental bill. Meanwhile, many baby boomers think they’ll never retire, given the shortfall in their retirement savings.

Employees are paying the pri e in elevated stress and employers are sharing the pain. Financially stressed employees miss an aver age of 4. 4 more workdays – and far more when they are at work but disengaged ( 12. 5) – than those without financial stress. Employers pay a absenteeism and presenteeism rates climb, and he bottom line is hit with rising health care costs since the financially stressed tend to neglect their g od eating and health habits.

Som 83% of U.S. employers hese days have instituted programs to address the problem, an improvement from just a few y ars ago, when just 20% of em ployers offered them in Y15

FOCUSREPORT: CUSOs

What do all CUSOs have in common? They began with an idea for how CUs can achieve more by working together. Learn about the talented innovators behind three new CUSOs in this Focus Report. Y6

Small Business Security

Help SMB
members prevent
breaches. Y14
Failing Can Be
a Good Thing
Use it to
enhance a CU
partnership. Y10
n an era when small credit
unions are frequently left in
the technological dust on a
consumer battlefield that is
rapidly moving online, one CUSO
is making a huge bet that strength
in numbers will move many credit
unions to the front of the competi-
tive pack.

That huge bet is in the form of
Lumin Digital, which St. Peters-
burg, Fla.-based PSCU launched
about a year ago and which op-
erates a cloud-based platform
that integrates mobile and online
banking platforms, card services,
data analytics and call center sup-
port, among other things. The idea
is to provide credit unions with
more advanced technology that
makes their digital experiences as
competitive and as sophisticated
as what many big banks provide
— and meets the expectations of
consumers who increasingly pri-
oritize online and mobile offer-
ings when they choose financial
institutions.
According to PSCU, the plat-
form provides card controls, per-
sonal dashboards, mobile and
desktop bill pay, remote deposit
capture, security controls, au-
tomatic updates and the ability
to add custom desktop, mobile
web and app features. Call cen-
ter support is also part of the
package, as are data analytics,
which PSCU said could
PSCU’s Tech Venture With Lumin Digital

Y16

MOBILE BANKING

TINA OREM
torem@cutimes.com
ichigan State Uni-
versity Federal
Credit Union is ex-
perimenting with
small-dollar loans to help a group
of people often under high stress
and in unstable conditions: Survi-
vors of domestic violence.

For the past five years, the East Lansing, Mich.-based credit union ($4.2 billion in assets, 269,344 members) has worked with a network of local domestic abuse shelters and a Michigan State researcher to find the right mix of parameters that will allow it to make loans that will help these women – and a few men – regain their independence and enhance their financial power.

“Their dedication is just amazing,” said Katie Gaynor, content and media manager for the Filene Research Institute, which has been an advisor on the project since it was conceived five years ago and has been publishing reports on its progress. Y17 JIM DUPLESSIS jduplessis@cutimes.com Road to Aiding Abuse Survivors Rocky