John Hancock Launches Retirement Resource Site

Ongoing economic challenges notwithstanding, it’s not surprising that with stories in the greater press advising consumers to delay retirement, Americans are pushing back their ideal retirement age.

John Hancock Retirement Plan Services (RPS) is countering this trend by making a new John Hancock Education Resource website available to plan sponsors, plan consultants and financial representatives, the company reports. The site is designed to help its representatives educate employees on their retirement options.

"Plan sponsors want their employees to maximize the effectiveness of their retirement plan,” said Andrew Ross, SVP of marketing, John Hancock RPS. "We've given all of our 47,000+ plan sponsors, as well as the plan consultants and financial representatives that we work with, an easy and intuitive way to deploy a comprehensive education and communications campaign to help employees get ready for retirement."

The site provides:

• A solution center that helps the user leverage the appropriate education programs and communications to suit their specific needs;

• A collection of employee paper-based and electronic materials and tools on retirement, investing, the elements of retirement plans and planning for retirement;

• The ability to browse materials by life stage or by communications type; and

• The option to choose various methods of communication such as brochures, online education tools, seminars and posters.

"We've always offered great participant communications materials, but making them so easy for a plan sponsor, plan consultant or financial representative to use is just one of the ways we're invested in making plans work," said Art Creel, executive vice president of sales and marketing, John Hancock RPS. "Not only do we want to offer high quality plans, we want them to succeed on all levels – with good participation for the plan sponsor and retirement readiness for the employee."