Participants will typically sign on to their account for a number of reasons: to check their balance, confirm their contribution rate, make changes to their plan, update their income or future assets, and more. The interface should enable all of these tasks while surfacing key data points to inform the participant and facilitate their planning. Further, the experience should also provide compelling incentives to advance them closer to their retirement income goals.
The landing page design for Schwab RT’s participant experience addresses a number of these important tasks, called out in the design snapshot below:
Important tasks of the 401(k) participant experience are called out with orange dots.
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Current Forecast vs. Goal
While account balance is a common data point, on its own the number isn’t particularly useful. Here we convert the participant’s forecasted balance to a monthly income in retirement, allowing them to compare it to what they spend now. The “Goal” retirement income is based on the percent of their current income they anticipate needing for their retirement lifestyle.
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Ability to Speculate on Savings Rate Changes
A vital factor in retirement savings is a participant’s elected savings rate, and it is front and center in Schwab RT’s experience. With any changes to the savings rates, the chart displays “Potential Gain” to illustrate the future income effect and incentivize the participant to save more.
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Personalized Recommendation
Armed with the participant’s data, we are able to provide personalized recommendations for savings increases that would bring the participant closer to their goal and/or more in line with their peers.
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Incentives - Peer Comparison
In addition to a tailored recommendation for savings increase, the experience features a peer comparison function that measures the participant against a tailored set of peers on savings balance, savings rate, and income replacement score. Appealing to a participant’s competitive instincts, peer comparison is yet another way to motivate participants to save and stay engaged in their retirement planning journey.
