New design features help improve retirement outcomes — derived from customer insight, influenced by behavioral finance

Voya data shows online retirement plan engagement increases savings by 52%

Voya Financial, Inc. (NYSE: VOYA), announced today enhancements to its retirement plan participant website, providing individuals with an intuitive, accessible and more streamlined experience that makes it easier to both monitor and manage savings to ultimately improve retirement outcomes.

Specifically, Voya’s participant website is organized around the primary reasons individuals visit their retirement account online, including savings progress, contribution adjustments and investment monitoring. The enhancements also feature simplified page designs and a newly added website “tour” to help employees navigate the site to best accomplish their goals. Within the streamlined navigation, there is easy access to a wide range of financial wellness resources for helping employees manage their financial life, including: interactive tools, the Voya Learn live and on-demand education platform, articles and a blog featuring timely and trending topics.

According to research from Voya’s own participant base, digital engagement has increased more than 26% over the past year.¹ In today’s world, digital platforms are becoming increasingly important as individuals seek to access information and guidance wherever and however they need. What’s more, Voya’s participant data also shows that individuals who engage with their retirement plan digitally through the web save 52% more than those who do not.²

“At Voya, our digital experiences are informed by three primary guiding principles. These include: ensuring our capabilities are simple and easy to use; helping make the right choice the easy choice for individuals; and providing education and reflection in the context of what an individual is doing when they log on to their retirement plan experience,” said Amy Vaillancourt, head of Wealth Solutions Management for Voya Financial. “As we continue to enhance and improve our capabilities, we remain focused on scaling our digital platforms to help drive improved financial outcomes.”

Built with a customer-centric approach, for those employees who take loans or withdrawals, the enhancements provide status updates on transactions via email and text message along with UPS delivery-tracking information. Pages adapt to a user’s device, which provides an optimal experience on a computer, tablet and mobile phone, and the enhancements also include user-friendly graphics and short videos to help simplify options for managing investments to support a variety of learning styles.

The latest changes to Voya’s participant experience are driven by both participant feedback and insights derived from behavioral finance research through the Voya Behavioral Finance Institute for Innovation. Using insights derived from various studies and research, Voya has helped employers reduce some of the complexity and obstacles that individuals face when making retirement planning decisions, including understanding the impact that digital design can have on helping to increase participant engagement.

“We see an important opportunity to combine behavioral finance research with digital insights to improve the design of retirement plan websites and to help boost the financial security of employees,” added Vaillancourt. “We know the design of websites can impact one’s savings decisions, so it’s exciting to imagine what we can learn and accomplish in this research area, particularly in today’s world when you consider the benefits it can bring to employers in helping increase the financial security of their workforce.”

In addition to the retirement plan experience, Voya is also making enhancements to its nonqualified deferred compensation (NQDC) participant experience leveraging similar insights and capabilities to drive greater engagement and outcomes. This includes a redesign of the website navigation and new features to help manage contributions, monitor account balances and review one’s investments.

The enhancements to Voya’s participant website experience build on the company’s continued digital focus that help improve the financial wellness of all Americans — with more enhancements planned for its plan sponsor and NQDC participant website experiences coming in 2021. In addition to its website experiences, Voya continues to invest in its suite of innovative savings and planning resources, including the myVoyage personalized participant experience, a recently launched emergency savings solution, budget calculator and Voya Learn digital educational platform.

As an industry leader focused on the delivery of health, wealth and investment solutions to and through the workplace, Voya Financial is committed to delivering on its mission to make a secure financial future possible for all Americans — one person, one family, one institution at a time.

1. Voya Financial plan participant data for the period of Q1 2021 compared to Q1 2020 and where digital engagement is defined as the total number of logins to the web or mobile app during the period.

2. Voya Financial plan participant data as of March 31, 2021. Digital engagement is defined as using the web at least once in the past 12 months.

About Voya Financial^®

Voya Financial, Inc. (NYSE: VOYA), provides health, wealth and investment solutions that enable its approximately 14.8 million individual, workplace and institutional clients to achieve their financial wellness goals with confidence. With a vision to be America’s Retirement Company®, Voya’s products, solutions and digital capabilities help create a better financial future for all. Voya is a Fortune 500 company that had $7.6 billion in revenue in 2020 and $729 billion in total assets under management and administration as of March 31, 2021. Certified as a “Great Place to Work” by the Great Place to Work® Institute, Voya is equally committed to conducting business in a way that is socially, environmentally, economically and ethically responsible. Voya has been recognized as a 2020 World’s Most Admired Company by Fortune magazine; one of the 2020 World’s Most Ethical Companies® by the Ethisphere Institute; as a member of the Bloomberg Gender Equality Index; and as a “Best Place to Work for Disability Inclusion” on the Disability Equality Index by Disability:IN. For more information, visit voya.com. Follow Voya Financial on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter @Voya.

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