Prestigious Excellence & Innovation Award
Presented to the MO Deferred Comp Plan for Their
Innovative Education Efforts

• November 6, 2019

The State of Missouri Deferred Compensation Plan (MO Deferred Comp) was one of five defined contribution plans honored Monday, November 4th at the Pensions & Investments' West Coast Defined Contribution conference. The plan received an Excellence & Innovation Award for their recent efforts to enhance state of Missouri employees’ retirement security by creatively addressing reoccurring participant questions using two of the plan’s calculators, RetiremenTrack and Grow Your Retirement Savings. The endeavor aimed to increase financial knowledge and influence employees to set goals and increase their contributions to a meaningful amount without overwhelming or inundating the average plan participant. As stated in the award winner's booklet,

"Under Ms. (Cindy) Rehmeier’s direction, the State of Missouri Deferred Compensation Plan developed two new easy-to-use calculators: RetiremenTrack and Grow Your Retirement Savings. Together, the new tools are helping participants not only understand their income sources, but also providing quick estimates on how much they may receive from their defined benefit pensions, Social Security and savings as well as their income replacement rate. A marketing campaign earlier this year aimed to thoroughly explain the new tools using videos that detailed what information to enter and where to click as well as fun videos with real life examples of why these tools are important and their ease of use. Delivered via email and text, the outreach effort included a survey request of employees to solicit feedback on the calculators. The plan received 381 completed surveys and usage of the two calculators more than tripled from April to May."

About the Calculators

RetiremenTrack is a one-page comprehensive calculator that allows the employee to see what their defined benefit pension, social security and specific level of retirement savings could provide in income in retirement. This tool lets participants know if they may have an income shortfall in retirement and what they can do to help alleviate that problem – whether that is by working longer, increasing their current retirement savings contribution, or by utilizing automatic annual contribution increase – all with easy-to-use sliders.

The Grow Your Retirement Savings calculator not only calculates an eventual savings balance at retirement based on anticipated years working and saving, but also tells the employee what percent income replacement and annual income in dollars that balance could provide them in retirement. It also tells them how much a chosen percent retirement savings contribution means in dollars per pay period.

About the Campaign

To promote and help employees better understand the tools, staff developed calculator walk-thru’s detailing what to enter and where to click as well as fun videos with real life examples of why these tools are important and how easy they are to use to get the most sought after answers quickly. The campaign was heavily pushed in March, April, and May of 2019. This campaign was delivered via email and text and included a survey request of employees to solicit responses as to feedback on the calculators. We received 381 completed surveys and RetiremenTrack and Grow Your Retirement Savings calculator usage more than tripled from April to May.

Calculator usage data from the previous calendar year and 2019 year-to-date through May:

This notable increase in usage was driven by our email, text, and social media marketing. We had more than 15,400 email opens with a successful click rate of 19.6% surpassing the industry average of 2.6%. Of the 5,441 mobile texts sent, we experienced a 20% click rate.

The deferred comp plan also received numerous positive comments on their surveys, including:

• “Great to see the projections for what I might need and how I am doing compared to that. Helpful tool.”
• “Great tool...it makes you think about things that haven’t come up before.”
• “Grow your Retirement Savings Calculator was pretty cool.”
• “I found it helpful to see what percentage I may need to reach $100,000.”
• “I liked being able to know what percentage of income put away will really boost retirement savings.”
• “I’m not fluent in matters of money, however these calculators were relatively easy to use.”
• “It gave me a good look at how every dollar saved affects my future.”
• “It was very comparable with sitting down with a financial advisor.”
• “Really like the ability to try multiple possibilities to see various outcomes.”
• “They were very insightful. Thank you.”
• “They were easy to use.”
• “These are great! They helped me to decide to add more money into def. comp.”

To view the award-winning nomination, click here.

The State of Missouri Deferred Compensation Plan understands that employees need tools that are quick and easy to use that will tell them what they need to know to be successful in retirement. That is why tools and supporting materials, like videos and ongoing outreach, is necessary. The plan will continue this initiative while looking for new and innovative ways to engage with state of Missouri employees and simplify retirement savings.

The State of Missouri Deferred Compensation Plan, a voluntary 457 defined contribution plan, is administered by the Missouri State Employees' Retirement System (MOSERS). To learn more about the deferred compensation plan's award-winning educational efforts, connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.