Fidelity Investments has launched a new online retirement tool called the Income Simulator for Fidelity NetBenefits participants.
The tool provides employees with a snapshot of how much estimated monthly income their current savings strategy might generate for their household relative to their retirement goals. It uses a modeling engine to incorporate potential earnings from not only accounts held at Fidelity, such as defined contribution plans, health savings accounts and IRAs, but also other possible retirement income sources, such as Social Security and previous employer pensions.
"Successfully helping employees plan for retirement is one of the most important goals of workforce management," said Tom McGirr, senior vice president of workplace solutions at Fidelity Investments. "Plan sponsors want user-friendly, yet intelligent, planning solutions so their employees can turn meaningful guidance into next steps to help them meet their retirement goals. Income Simulator is designed to help them do just that."
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The enhanced offering – which is available to all of Fidelity's 15.8 million workplace participants through NetBenefits.com by spring 2013 – allows the participant to visualize how a few small changes may make a big difference in helping them achieve their retirement savings goals by modeling multiple "what if" scenarios. It then provides opportunities for the individual to explore suggested next steps.
But one of the most notable aspects of Income Simulator is that it enables participants to aggregate information about external assets, even if the accounts are held at other financial institutions. Other assets that could be added include additional household income, other workplace accounts, pensions, health savings accounts, IRAs, Social Security, government benefits, and non-retirement assets.
Once the information is entered, Income Simulator provides an illustration on how the individual's potential monthly after-tax retirement income compares to their set goal – in both average and below average markets – and then lets them experiment with adjustments to their contribution level, investment mix, and retirement age to see how it might affect their potential level of income during retirement. Further, it allows them to exclude income sources that they don't wish to factor into their retirement income.
According to a Fidelity analysis, half of participants who engage in guidance interactions with Fidelity take positive actions to help improve their retirement readiness, including increasing contributions for active participants, changing asset allocation, and consolidating former workplace plans.
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