Rethinking today’s distribution of retirement education
Financial education and financial literacy are the bloodline to long term financial success and stability. Unfortunately, we are not doing enough of it. Financial advisors are paid to provide a service that is very challenging to successfully deliver. Our goal should be to effectively distribute quality financial education to all employees not just those participating in the retirement plan (Click to tweet). But currently it is impossible to deliver the education, measure the success of each and every employee and guarantee a successful retirement outcome.
This creates a challenge for advisors who want to offer a great service, but often struggle with spreading themselves too thin when attempting to reach a wide audience. As a result, employers and advisors are at a loss with properly educating their entire workforce. Unfortunately, many of the employees who are unable to receive proper financial education are often the ones that need it the most and will ultimately come up short in retirement.
Enter the internet. The single biggest contribution that the internet has brought to society is the ability to put the world's information at your fingertips. Now it’s up to us to structure this information in a way that allows the best available content to reach to the most appropriate audience and measure its effectiveness. This change has transformed some of the worlds biggest industries; from changing the way we buy cars like Cars.com to organizations like Coursera.com who bring education to the masses. With America’s recent focus on financial literacy and successful retirement outcomes, we believe it’s absolutely necessary to bring quality and easy to understand financial and retirement education to the masses(Click to tweet).
By going online we can distribute education through edukate.com to assure that employees have a solid foundation of financial awareness. Enabling them to gain the confidence necessary to save and invest for their financial futures. Using technology we can measure the success and “financial health” of an employer population while using gamification tactics to motivate employees in a way we have never seen before.
Ultimately, financial advisors will be working with a more educated pool of employees creating more successful retirement outcomes. The benefits will spread to all stakeholders resulting in happier employees, better retention, and lower benefits cost.