Great-West Life introduces interactive resource centre for plan sponsors

WINNIPEG, Aug. 25, 2014 /CNW/ - Employers who offer group retirement and savings plans want to know their programs are helping employees achieve retirement income adequacy and need to ensure their plans comply with regulatory or legislative requirements. Now, Great-West Life has introduced an interactive, responsive sponsor resource centre that simplifies how plan compliance is monitored and provides enhanced reporting that illustrates member behaviours to create a meaningful way for sponsors to understand member investment decisions.

"Great-West Life's sponsor resource centre and its tools were developed based on research and in-depth discussions with key sponsors and other industry stakeholders," says Jeff Aarssen, Senior Vice-President, Group Retirement Services, Wealth Management. "Their insights contributed to the development of a resource centre that makes it easier for sponsors to make strategic decisions about their plans, which can help members achieve their personal financial goals."

Each of the resource centre's views is unique and quickly rendered. Sponsors and their advisors can easily view plan activity and spot trends by age ranges, asset classes, points-in-time, or plan types, among many other options.

Additional features include:

• An important messages section that keeps sponsors up to date and displays time-sensitive announcements such as legislative updates, important deadlines and recent fund changes.
• Sponsor-controlled interactive widgets that display detailed member data in charts and graphs and provide a new way to review plan details, such as:
  • Investment behaviours of members throughout their various life stages 
  • Withdrawals by subgroup, age range and reason for withdrawal, with the ability to target this data by subgroup or age range
  • Overall and individual plan health
• A plan governance tool, accessible from the resource centre, simplifies how plan compliance with governance guidelines is monitored and can be used by both sponsors and advisors.

Advisors can add value for their clients by accessing the plan governance tool and completing capital accumulation plan (CAP) reviews and, as applicable, Canadian Association of Pension Supervisory Authorities (CAPSA) reviews on behalf of their clients. Both sponsors and advisors can use this tool's notes feature to discuss compliance questions or make recommendations directly in the tool.

The sponsor resource centre is fully compatible with desktop and mobile devices such as tablets. This video demonstrates how the resource centre can help group retirement plan sponsors easily analyze member trends and make informed plan management decisions.

About Great-West Life
The Great-West Life Assurance Company is a leading provider of group retirement plans in Canada, administering over 17,500 group capital accumulation plans and over 1.3 million plan member accounts. In the United States, Great-West Financial is the fourth largest group retirement plan record-keeper based on total participants.

As at Dec. 31, 2013                  

Find Great-West Life on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and YouTube.

Image with caption: "New online tools use dynamic charts to quickly filter group retirement savings plan data, identify plan member trends and download findings. (CNW Group/Great-West Life Assurance Company)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20140825_C1630_PHOTO_EN_4881.jpg

SOURCE: Great-West Life Assurance Company

Marlene Klassen, APR, Assistant Vice-President, Communication Services, 204.946.7705