The retirement industry is at a digital crossroads. Recordkeepers are facing increasing pressure from clients and prospects alike to provide the types of seamless, personalized digital experiences that plan sponsors and participants have grown to expect—expectations informed by the websites and apps they use in their daily lives. Digital experiences are increasingly important in RFPs and are winning and losing firms millions of dollars. Leading recordkeepers have invested heavily in improving their digital experiences and have made significant strides in recent years. But it remains difficult for retirement plan providers to keep up with expectations for user experiences and the latest digital trends.
Andrew (Drew) Way knows the challenges faced by recordkeepers. As VP of Sales & Marketing at Corporate Insight, former Senior Director of Research, and a retirement industry subject matter expert, Drew has spent years analyzing how major retirement plan providers and leading retail financial services firms deliver digital experiences to millions of users. We asked Drew to share his insights on where the retirement plan industry’s digital experiences are heading—and what trends and insights recordkeepers need to know to stay competitive.
The Retirement Industry Reacts to Shifting Digital Expectations
CI: As someone who has been tracking the retirement industry for years: What’s the biggest shift you’re seeing in how plan participants expect to interact with their retirement accounts digitally? What trends are shaping tomorrow’s retirement plan digital experiences?
Drew Way: The most important thing to understand is that participant expectations aren’t being shaped by what other retirement plan providers are doing—expectations are being set by every other digital interaction in the user’s life. When someone has a seamless experience transferring money instantly through Venmo, gets personalized recommendations from Netflix that actually match their preferences, or receives proactive fraud alerts from their credit card company, that becomes their baseline expectation for all digital experiences. They don’t think “well, this is just a retirement account, so I should expect less.” They think “why can’t I get a real-time notification when my employer match hits my account like I do when someone Venmos me five dollars?” The bar for what constitutes good digital experience keeps rising across every industry, and retirement participants are bringing those elevated expectations—shaped by fintech apps, streaming services, e-commerce platforms, and social media—to their retirement planning experience.
At Corporate Insight, we’ve been consistently surveying DC plan participants on their digital preferences, usage, and other critical behaviors throughout my entire tenure at the company. Some things don’t change—key account information like balances and performance details are always most important, along with strong security features and a well-designed, informative homepage. But other aspects have evolved significantly over time.
Here are some of the more noteworthy changes in participant digital preferences and usage from our survey data over the last decade. One important caveat: in these surveys, anyone who reports logging into their account less than once every six months is terminated from the survey, so we’re looking at relatively engaged users.
- Increased engagement frequency – In 2013, 64% of survey respondents logged into their account at least once per month, whereas in our most recent survey, that figure was 78%—a 22% increase.
- Increased usage of digital retirement planning tools – We don’t have a perfect apples-to-apples comparison here, but the data still shows a significant increase. In 2013, we asked about tool usage over the past 12 months, while in our most recent survey we asked about the past six months. Despite the condensed timeframe, there was still a large increase in reported retirement planning tool usage. In 2013, only 28% of respondents used a planning tool in the prior 12 months, compared to 42% who used one in the previous six months today. This represents meaningful growth and speaks to the importance of firms providing intuitive, accurate planning tools.
- Increased usage of educational content – Similar survey methodology caveat, but an even more impressive result. In 2013, only 14% of survey respondents accessed educational content on their retirement plan site in the previous 12 months. In our most recent survey, 40% accessed educational content in the previous six months. Combined with the planning tool data, this shows participants increasingly turning to their retirement plan digital experiences for planning help and education.
- Increased reliance on digital customer service support – In 2013, only 15% of participants interacted with customer service via email or live chat in the past 12 months. In our most recent survey, we broke this out further and asked about several different digital support methods. The results clearly show increased reliance on alternatives to picking up the phone. Over the past six months: 36% sought assistance through website FAQ resources, 22% interacted with a virtual assistant (a surprisingly high figure given the limited availability of these tools on participant sites), 21% initiated a live chat session, and 20% sent an email to customer service.
There are numerous additional data points I could share, but the story is clear: participants are increasingly relying on digital customer experiences for critical tasks like learning, planning, and receiving support.
Mobile drives digital engagement, even for retirement planning
CI: Mobile-first is everywhere, but retirement planning feels like a ‘sit down at your computer’ activity. In our brokerage research, we’ve seen that customers use desktop platforms and mobile platforms for different investing activities. Are participants actually using mobile for serious retirement decisions?
Drew Way: Unequivocally, yes. Going back to the first point I made—participants’ digital expectations are set by the digital experiences they interact with daily. Whether it’s banking, entertainment, shopping, or booking travel, customers have come to expect that they should be able to accomplish anything from their phone that they can do from a computer. This has objectively seeped into how retirement plan participants track and manage their retirement accounts, and we see it clearly in the data.
In our most recent survey, we asked respondents to list all the platforms they used to access their retirement plan. Approximately 25% of all survey respondents access their retirement plan only via a mobile app. Among users who stated the website is their primary means of accessing their retirement plan, 40% also access their account from a mobile app, and 31% access it through a mobile web browser.
25% of all survey respondents access their retirement plan only via a mobile app.
Perhaps most importantly, individuals who reported the mobile app as their primary access method log into their account more frequently than website-first participants on average—51% of users who primarily use the mobile app log in at least once a week, compared to 40% of those who primarily use the website.
It’s also important to remember that not everyone has a desk job where they work on a computer, and many individuals have opted not to have a personal computer at home—for these people, mobile is the only way they can access their retirement plan account.
In terms of specific activities—getting at the “serious retirement decisions” portion of your question—here are the most commonly reported activities performed on mobile apps from our survey, excluding table stakes activities like viewing account information (balance, current contribution rate, holdings, etc.). The percentages represent survey respondents who performed each activity within a mobile app in the previous six months:
- Downloaded an account statement – 50%
- Used a retirement planning tool – 44%
- Used a personal financial management tool – 40%
- Updated login credentials – 37%
- Looked up an answer within FAQs – 34%
- Updated contact information – 34%
- Accessed educational content – 33%
- Used a virtual assistant – 28%
- Changed their contribution rate or amount – 26%
- Engaged with a financial wellness assessment – 24%
AI’s influence on retirement plan digital experiences today and in the future
CI: Where do you see AI, maybe the most important of all the trends in financial services right now, having the biggest impact on retirement plan participant experiences in the next 2-3 years?
Drew Way: There’s a lot to potentially unpack here, especially given how rapidly the AI landscape is changing. I’ve personally spoken with multiple leading recordkeepers recently about their AI roadmaps—while I’m not at liberty to discuss specifics, just trust me when I say a ton is currently in the works, with much more to follow.
The most obvious answer is virtual assistants—and it’s rooted in, you guessed it, expectations being set by participants’ daily digital experiences. The more people use publicly available AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Google Gemini, etc., and the more they leverage advanced virtual assistants from retail financial services firms like Bank of America, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo, the more they’ll expect similar experiences within their retirement planning platform. Currently, only 35% of the firms we track daily in our Retirement Plan Monitor research service offer a virtual assistant. On top of that, none of them really stack up to the top banking virtual assistants, let alone leading public AI tools. This will absolutely change—you’ll see increased prevalence of virtual assistants within digital retirement planning experiences and, more importantly, a significant increase in quality and utility.
A potentially less obvious answer, but one I’m confident will be considerably impacted by AI over the next few years, involves the shift in user search habits. Anyone in marketing will attest to this, as it’s already affecting the SEO landscape. Many people are now turning to ChatGPT and similar tools as their primary search method, when in the past it was usually Google. Due to this shift, people will begin expecting the same functionality on their financial account sites and apps, including retirement platforms. Leading financial services firms and retirement plan providers recognize this and are already working on adapting accordingly.
Another area worth highlighting is data analysis, specifically obtaining insights from data. The biggest impact here is on plan sponsors, who currently rely on robust but often clunky and antiquated reporting systems to obtain the data and insights they need. For those unfamiliar with these reporting interfaces, think Salesforce—it’s a powerful CRM tool, but anyone who’s used it knows it’s far from user-friendly. I’ve spoken with multiple firms that are working on integrating AI into data analysis and reporting features, hoping to turn a process that can take up to 30 minutes to obtain needed insights into one that takes just seconds. Instead of setting up report parameters, generating the report, configuring filters and sorting options, and then finally analyzing the data, plan sponsors could simply ask a chat-like interface for the insights they need, and the AI would provide the direct answer.
There’s no shortage of additional areas I could discuss, but I’ll touch on one last one that’s related to data: personalization. Light personalization on digital experiences is relatively common and easy enough to execute, but offering a truly personalized experience is remarkably rare—possibly non-existent—in financial services currently. It’s not for lack of effort or desire, but because many firms don’t have the necessary backend infrastructure to ensure they have all the data needed to deliver a truly personalized experience, let alone leverage that data effectively. However, AI is changing the game here. I’ve spoken with multiple leading firms that believe AI is the key to unlocking this capability. There’s still significant work needed on the backend, but once the data infrastructure is in place, AI can analyze and interpret that data to drive much more personalized user experiences.
Planning for a rapidly evolving future in retirement experiences
CI: As a parting thought, what is your biggest piece of advice for recordkeepers with respect to the future of retirement plan digital experiences and all the trends we’ve touched on here?
Drew Way: This is a tough one, and as I’ve been working on this piece, I’ve cycled through a bunch of different ideas and took entirely too long to land on what I want to say. I could continue beating the dead horse about what’s setting participants’ digital expectations, lean into the shiny object that is AI, or go the more cliché route of talking about digital’s importance for improving participant outcomes and financial wellbeing. My flippant way of expressing that aside, all of that is of course very important—but here’s what I’ll leave you with.
There’s no singular answer to the question “How can I provide the best, most impactful digital experience to my customers?” There’s no silver bullet, no skeleton key, no magic formula—no panacea, if you will. The best advice I can give, to steal a phrase from one of my favorite podcasts, The Fantasy Footballers, is to “always stay water.” By that I mean, always be flexible and quick to evolve your approach as circumstances dictate. For good reason, long gone are the days where firms spend years revamping their entire site, then once it’s done, more or less leave it alone until another revamp is required. One benefit of the much more iterative and agile approach most leading firms take to digital enhancements is that you can much more easily follow this advice.
We spoke about the impact AI will have—but the AI landscape is evolving so quickly that you have no choice but to stay on top of it and quickly adapt as needed to deliver the best capabilities and experience. Customer expectations are always evolving as daily websites and apps continue raising the bar. Geopolitical events can change market conditions in a flash, drastically altering the financial needs of many, for better or worse.
Given all of this, and many other reasons we could list, the most important thing for firms to know and embody—to put them in position to consistently deliver the best possible digital experience to users—is to be agile, be flexible, and be ready to adapt your strategy and execution quickly. This allows you to capitalize on constantly changing circumstances, expectations, and behaviors, helping you get ahead of the curve and stay there. Even the most well-thought-out plans and strategies can be rendered totally moot in a moment if circumstances quickly and drastically change. As the legendary boxer and The Hangover actor Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” How are you going to adjust to still come out on top when this occurs? Knowing that, believing in it, and embracing it is my top advice and parting thought.
The retirement industry’s digital transformation is accelerating, and recordkeepers who want to stay competitive need deep insights into what’s working—and what isn’t—across the competitive landscape. At Corporate Insight, we help retirement plan providers benchmark their digital experiences against industry leaders and identify the specific improvements that will drive participant engagement and business results.
Interested in learning more about how your digital experience stacks up? Contact our team to discuss how our retirement industry expertise and behind-the-login competitive intelligence can help you build a winning digital strategy. Visit CI’s Insights section for more on the latest trends transforming digital experiences in retirement plan and other financial services verticals.