PERA Votes to Switch from Voya to Empower

The PERA Board voted, pending final contract negotiations, to switch record keepers for the Defined Contribution plans (which includes the 401k/457b plans) from Voya to Empower. Voya came in second place in the RFP process, and it would’ve been “fine” to continue with them, but staff, the consultant, and the Board all thought Empower would provide a better experience to members.

The fee each proposed is essentially identical (Empower was slight higher in their bid). I would suspect that it won’t change the fee structure for the plan/funds at all, but I don’t know that for sure as I don’t know how the proposed fee compares to the current fee. (Since PERA has consistently focused on lowering the fees, I would be surprised to see them go up, but we’ll see.)

I’ve shared screenshots of the two slides below as reference for the pros and cons of each. But, essentially, Empower appears to offer better service, more customized offerings, and better technology. Interestingly, Empower purchased Personal Capital last year and will be integrating that into the platform by year’s end. I think that has huge potential if it’s done correctly.

I also think it’s significant that the PERA staff ranked Empower higher, considering that makes more work for them as part of the conversion. Note that there was going to be a fair amount of work no matter what, because as part of this RFP PERA is going to transition away from single sign on (meaning you will no longer have to sign on to PERA’s website in order to get to Voya – soon Empower), and they will be aggregating the contribution data before it goes to the vendor (right now each employer sends their data to Voya, after this transition it will all get sent to PERA and PERA will send one file to Empower). But, even with that, there will be a ton of work in order to convert the data over and, of course, in communication.

I do not know the timeline of when this transition would actually happen, but my sense would be by the end of this calendar year. I’ll have to see the final details, of course, but at the moment I’m cautiously optimistic about this change.