New York-based First Eagle Investment Management is trying to help retirement savers improve how they accumulate and decumulate retirement assets.
First Eagle plans to soon demo an interactive online retirement tool it’s been developing over the past six to eight months in conjunction with Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research (CRR) and Upstatement, a Boston-based development firm that focuses on branding, digital design and technology.
The tool is being released this week to First Eagle, which plans to show it to many recordkeepers and RIA aggregators, said Michael Rosenberg, head of retirement investment solutions at First Eagle. The tool, which recordkeepers and advisors can embed in their systems, aims to help make retirement more relatable and more understandable, he said. It “should help engage, motivate and give participants really clear information about their portfolio retirement window and what a future paycheck might look like,” he said.
According to Rosenberg, the tool, which First Eagle won’t be charging a fee for, puts personal data through financial calculators built by First Eagle and the Boston College team. This includes a saver’s pay history and contribution history, rates of return and products invested in. The tool will remember savers’ information and track their progress, he said. Savers will be able to access the tool through recordkeeping websites and advisors can use it to engage clients.
The more people who use the interactive tool, the more information Boston College will be able to gather, analyze and then share with recordkeepers and financial advisors, who can use it to improve their systems, he said.
First Eagle is interested in separating “the trends practitioners may think are the realities of the retirement world to what actually happens,” said Rosenberg. It’s also important to understand retirement savers who don’t work with financial advisors, he said.
Last month, CRR, with financial support from First Eagle, published an issue brief titled, “Do Individuals Know When They Should Be Saving For a Spouse?” CRR found that dual-earner households with only one saver aren’t saving enough for retirement. They’re saving just 4.9 percent of their household earnings, compared to 8.6 percent for single-earner couples and 9.3 percent for households with two savers.
First Eagle is the corporate partner on another research paper on savings to be published this month by CRR, said Rosenberg. First Eagle and CRR also plan to collaborate on research that looks at how people spend money when they retire and how retirement savers react to financial shocks and unforeseen life events, he said.
Distribution Dilemma
First Eagle plans to focus on how to help retirees distribute their retirement assets, said Rosenberg. CRR is helping it to better understand the distribution dilemma that has been capturing growing attention.