CI’s Retirement & Workplace team has been tracking retirement firms’ responses to market volatility since President Trump’s announced tariffs began impacting the market and the retirement plans of invested participants. The primary response among different firms has been to promote their educational and financial wellness offerings as well as to add new timely resources. These resources have taken the form of podcasts, videos and articles that provide generic advice addressing participant fears, providing suggestions for planning ahead, and simply helping participants gain a better idea of what market volatility means. Some firms also suggest their existing tools for this new pressing context. The firms have been relying primarily on unobtrusive banners, lightboxes, and/or tiles on either public site login pages or secure site homepages and dashboards to advertise these resources.
Retirement firms seem to be leaning heavily on public offerings that any internet user can access, as seen with Corebridge Financial, Charles Schwab, TIAA, and Empower. Corebridge Financial made a more obvious promotion of their market volatility support on their login page with a hard-to-miss carousel tile, unlike other firms. This opens an article in their public Insights and Education center which ultimately encourages participants to contact their financial professional after providing four other general principles about how to maintain financial tranquility. Firms like Charles Schwab and Empower emphasized accessing expert advice, while Corebridge emphasized remaining calm.
Empower added a pre-login lightbox which reminds participants that retirement accounts are long-term investments and that timing the market is usually an unsuccessful endeavor. The lightbox encourages participants to open the public Learning Center site for Market Volatility resources, and this now includes a dedicated Navigating Market Volatility section. It has multiple links which open videos and downloadable educational PDFs, including one with a Spanish translation. Empower also initially provided some resources within an existing section but then created a devoted Navigating Market Volatility section and consolidated resources there.
Charles Schwab—on the public login page for Retirement Plan Services—added a Market Volatility banner that encourages participants to read advice from Schwab experts, and on the bottom of the page is the Market Volatility Resources tile, which is easy to miss as it blends in with the other tiles. Clicking on the Learn More link opens a dedicated Market Volatility page with informative articles and the On Investing podcast series, the latter being a distinctive offering for participants.
TIAA added a banner on the public login page—which opens a public article about market volatility’s potential impact on retirement—and the homepage banner opens a dedicated public market volatility page with various resources including webinars, articles, videos, and even scheduling an appointment with a financial professional—a somewhat unique feature for firm sites also adopted by Merrill.
Similar to TIAA, Fidelity added market volatility resources to its secure site homepage but instead used tiles and banners. The homepage has a new Get Help Managing Market Swings alert banner as well as three new tiled resource links at the bottom of the page in the Benefits Resources section—they open an educational video, an investing article that encourages participants to stick to their investment plans, and a guaranteed income estimator tool. Fidelity is one of the few firms that primarily provided resources within the secure site.
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Rowan Kurz
Rowan Kurz is an analyst on CI's retirement and workplace finance team.