Employee benefits newsmakers: Vitals, PSCA, InHub, ADP

In the employee benefits industry, no matter whether you’re a broker, advisor, benefits manager, or solution provider, the only constant is change.  Here are the latest promotions, partnerships, acquisitions, awards, letter writers, and more.

Insurance and benefits solutions provider Unum has promoted John Stibal to senior vice president of sales and client management. He has served in various roles during his 36 years with Unum, including regional vice president of sales and client management for the company’s Northeast and Midwest regions. He’ll provide strategic oversight for the business’s U.S. sales operations.

The National Society of Newspaper Columnists (NSNC) elected Christopher Carosa of Mendon, New York its new president. Carosa writes weekly and monthly columns for the employee benefits industry publication BenefitsPRO, among several publications, as well as FiduciaryNews.com. He also continues to operate a boutique investment adviser and proprietary mutual fund.

The National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions and Remedy Partners are collaborating to help accelerate development and employer adoption of bundled payments across the country. The organizations are examining how best to build a national platform that will offer employers a clearer path toward adoption of episode-based payment and benefit design and will test the concept with select coalitions over the next year.

Signature Estate and Investment Advisors, a full-service wealth management firm headquartered in Southern California, announced that it reached $8 billion in assets under management. The firm was also named to the 2018 Financial Times 300 Top RIA list, which acknowledges top independent advisory firms across the United States.

The Plan Sponsor Council of America (PSCA), a part of the American Retirement Association (ARA), has submitted written guidance on missing participants to the Department of Labor, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and the IRS. PSCA provided this guidance in response to recent DOL enforcement activity as well as a Government Accountability Office request. PSCA heard concerns from its plan sponsor members that they have been or may be subjected to enforcement actions even though the DOL and IRS have not issued comprehensive guidance on missing participants that provides a clear roadmap for compliance.  PSCA’s sample plan provides plan sponsors with ten clear steps to locate missing participants for certain plans while continuing to meet their fiduciary obligations and preserve their plan qualification.

Foley Hoag LLP has launched a new parental leave policy for its United States-based legal personnel. The new policy provides paid parental leave for up to 18 weeks to all parents, regardless of whether one is the primary caregiver or not. It further allows new parents to take the leave at any point during the 12 months following the birth or adoption of their child(ren). All legal personnel who take paid parental leave will receive 100 percent of their base compensation.

OneAmerica announced the appointment of new executives to lead key lines of business for the Indianapolis-based financial services company. Dennis Martin was named president of Individual Life and Financial Services (ILFS) and Sandy McCarthy was appointed president of Retirement Services. Martin has served in the acting ILFS role since January of this year, while McCarthy is new to the OneAmerica team.

Independent retirement plan consulting firm Plan Sponsor Consultants has moved its annual Recordkeeper RFP update to a digital format with InHub’s online RFP management platform. The annual questionnaire was previously managed manually. Plan Sponsor Consultants has conducted over 75 recordkeeper/administrator RFPs in the last 3 years, and has moved all future RFPs online via InHub’s technology.

ADP’s second annual Datathon gathered more than 40 partners and innovators from across the ADP business for two weeks of collaboration and ideation around creating new ways to use the company’s anonymized data from more than 30 million employees. Three teams conceived solutions that used machine learning and artificial intelligence to bring ADP data to life:

• Talent optimization: A tool that maps the correlation between educational experience and career outcome, which would serve both recruiters and the future workforce.
• User experience: A 401(k) benchmarking service that helps employees manage their accounts through guidance around peer group contributions and retirement goals.
• Business impact: A digital career coach that will provide workers with steps for reaching specific, long and short-term career goals.

Financial platform STASH announced that all new and current users under the age of 25 can access retirement accounts with no STASH management fees. Various ancillary services fees will still be charged by the custodian and ETF expenses when opening a STASH Retire account. Advisory products and services are offered through Stash Investments LLC, an SEC registered investment advisor. Stash Capital LLC, an SEC registered broker-dealer and member FINRA/SIPC, serves as introducing broker for Stash Clients’ advisory accounts.

MyMedicalShopper announced a partnership with Alegeus, a provider of consumer-directed healthcare solutions. Third-party administrators that want to help employers cut costs can now look to MyMedicalShopper and Alegeus for medical price transparency tools integrated into the health care benefit account experience. This gives consumers the ability to compare prices across multiple providers within their geographic region and to shop using their tax-advantaged accounts.

Vitals announced the formation of a new division, Vitals 360. This new division will focus on developing and advancing innovative data, quality and predictive analytics technologies with the aim of letting plans be able to negotiate competitive rates, select the best-value providers, highlight the highest-quality providers with the best outcomes, get members shopping, predict shopping behavior, keep members in network and provide administrative technologies to support bundled payments. Chris Henderson has been named President of the newly formed division.