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2020 Signature Award Winners - Investment Education

Investment Education
This category is for communications to plan participants by their companies regarding investments, investment diversification, or investment changes, including, but not limited to programs that were successful in encouraging employees to take action on investments in their accounts, introducing new investment options, campaigns targeting pre-retirees who may have too much risk, or younger workers who may be too risk averse in their portfolios, etc.

1st Place – Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP with Voya Financial
Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP is a 75-year old leading international law firm with 1,450 total employees. 
This campaign’s goal was to provide information and education about fund lineup changes and encourage employees with questions to talk to an advisor. The campaign used phased communications, one of which was the “Take Time for Your Future” wellness challenge to encourage employees to make time to schedule a 401(k) planning session. Materials used were emails, an e-book, webcasts, a target-date fund video, direct mail, onsite programs, local HR outreach, and “Be Well” points for participation. The initial email had an 82.4 percent open rate and a 4 percent click rate; ongoing emails had a 40-75 percent open rate. The fund change book had 1,021 unique views. Onsite sessions had 75 attendees and 160 employees met in one-on-one sessions. This company won because they used a thorough, well planned, and well executed campaign. It had a subtle and clean design with well-written materials that were easy to navigate. Creative tools were used such as an e-book and animated video. Offering “Be Well” points added a fun way to get engagement.

2nd Place – California Institute of Technology with TIAA
The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) is a world-renowned science and engineering research and education institution, with 10,000 total employees.
Caltech wanted to educate employees on annuities and lifetime income. They had an event to kick off the campaign with TIAA’s Vice President of Actuarial Consulting Services providing insight. The materials used were a postcard, email, and a self-mailer with a card that could attach to an ID lanyard. The campaign resulted in the initial email having a 34 percent open rate and an 11 percent click rate. Nearly sixty percent of event attendees contributed assets to a fixed annuity within 90 days, 70 percent contributed to a variable annuity. There was a 39 percent increase in use of web-based lifetime income modeling tool. This campaign won for its creative theme, “Solve your retirement income equation,” and had an appealing design.  “The Science of Benefits: Understanding the elements of finance,” was a good tagline and nice tie in to CalTech. Their materials were well designed, clear and easy to read, offered helpful information, and were actionable. It had a clever use of a cut-out card which could be added to participants’ existing ID badge lanyards containing contact information to reach a consultant.

 

 

3rd Place – JTEKT North America with Prudential Retirement
JTEKT North America is a global supplier of automotive steering systems and driveline components, bearings, and machine tools with 6,000 employees.
JTEKT North America chose to introduce a new guaranteed income solution in order to provide employees with help on income security in retirement. The goal was to educate employees about the new offering. The company changed the QDIA to Prudential’s asset allocation program with IncomeFlex and they auto-enrolled new employees into it. To promote this change they used direct mailings, emails, handouts for HR reps providing one-on-one education, a microsite, a QDIA notice, a fund fact sheet and a video. The result was that fewer than 1 percent of auto-enrolled participants opted out of IncomeFlex. The reason this was a winning campaign was because they used appropriately targeted and relevant messaging with clear action steps for each group. They made good use of an interactive, easy-to-use modeling tool to help participants explore different future scenarios.