The retirement digital experience underwent notable changes in 2025, with an 87.3% increase in observed web experience updates from 2024. Tracking the enhancements that recordkeepers make to the digital experience can shed light on internal strategies and help identify competitive opportunities and developing industry standards. Firms may focus on launching exciting new features or fine-tuning the experience through design and navigation improvements. Corporate Insight’s Retirement Plan Monitor publishes an annual Pace of Change Report that outlines every observed change within the participant site digital experience and extracts key findings to highlight trends within the industry.
Below is a preview of some key findings and trends from this pace of change report:
Easier navigation and better planning tools took center stage
Recordkeepers made the most changes within two areas: helping participants plan for retirement and making websites easier to navigate. Together, these two categories accounted for more than half of all the changes we tracked in 2025.
On the planning side, firms rolled out new educational content and improved tools that help participants understand their retirement outlook. On the navigation side, providers reworked menus and modernized page layouts.
Meanwhile, customer support features received the least attention—something worth watching as AI-driven support tools continue to develop.
Many updates, but most were small
Across the 17 firms in our coverage set, we counted 397 total participant-site changes in 2025, averaging about 23 per firm. However, most of those changes were relatively minor. We classified changes on a scale from low to high significance. Low-significance updates are small quality-of-life improvements. Medium-significance changes involve things like site-wide rebrands or security overhauls. High-significance changes include full homepage redesigns, major new tools or new transactional capabilities. While a handful of firms delivered truly impactful updates, the bulk of changes in 2025 fell in the low-significance bucket.
Security sees a major upgrade
Cybersecurity has been a hot topic across financial services, and retirement providers took it seriously in 2025. Several firms invested in strengthening how participants protect their accounts.
Fidelity reorganized its Security page from the ground up, making it far easier for users to review their account security status, manage multi-factor authentication (MFA) settings, and access helpful resources—all in one place.
Multifactor authentication is quickly becoming a baseline expectation rather than a differentiator. Principal took things a step further by introducing passkey authentication, a password-free login option that many consumers already use on their phones. Merrill, meanwhile, enhanced its USB security key option for users who prefer hardware-based protection.
Modernized transactional interfaces boast sleek displays
Firms focused on modernizing transactional interfaces, replacing dated interfaces with sleek designs that favor ample white space, updated visualizations, granular input control and linear journeys. These changes appear across the contribution, investment and loan/withdrawal interfaces.
Lincoln Financial made substantial design improvements in 2025, including much-needed updates to the contribution management interface and loan request journey. The updated Contributions interface presents a straightforward, two-step journey. Dual percentage/dollar boxes replace slider inputs, offering more granular control for rate designation. A refreshed Contributions landing boasts new visualizations and detailed contribution breakdowns. A cleaner iteration of the Loan Modelling tool funnels participants directly into the updated transactional interface, which benefits from a sleek design that combines ample whitespace with simplified inputs and a dynamic summary section.
Mobile apps are catching up to the desktop experience
As mobile app use becomes increasingly favored across several industries, enhancements to mobile home screens and dashboards were a clear focus for retirement providers in 2025. Several firms made significant upgrades to their mobile app home screens in 2025, bringing them in line with the look and feel of their desktop platforms.
T. Rowe Price’s revamped home screen adopts the same dark blue color palette and visual style as the web experience, creating a more cohesive feel regardless of which device you’re using.
What to watch for in retirement digital experience trends in 2026
As the digital financial landscape continues to evolve, firms will strive to adapt and improve the user experience. AI-powered tools bring in both innovation and challenges, putting pressure on firms to remain on top of emerging AI developments. Expect to see more AI-powered support tools and increasingly personalized recommendations. Security will remain a priority as the threat landscape continues to evolve and users demand more robust protection for their retirement savings. Additionally, continued development of mobile app experiences will cater to a broader range of users and increase overall platform engagement.
Chloe Yip
Chloe Yip is an analyst on CI's retirement team.