BofA executive shares the financial benefits employees want in 2023

As employees grapple with an endless onslaught to their financial stability, are your financial wellness benefits doing enough for each and every one of your employees? 

Between record inflation and the looming threat of a recession, feeling financially secure is a pipe dream for most Americans. According to Bank of America's new workplace benefits report, 62% of employees are stressed by their financial situation, and 97% of employers believe they are responsible for their employees' financial wellness. 

Yet benefits will only scratch the surface of what an employee actually needs to feel financially secure, today and in the future, says John Quinn, head of institutional retirement products and platforms at Bank of America. 

Read more: 5 financial wellness benefits to help employees tackle their money issues 

"No two individuals are alike," Quinn says. "I think there's been a complete mindset shift where employers have fully recognized that having employees that are financially well, who aren't stressed at work, who are thinking for the long-term requires that engagement to be much more broad based and comprehensive." 

Bank of America's Financial Life Benefits platform provides that comprehensive program, with financial service tools, assessments and trackers that take into account the individual habits, hurdles and goals of every client. In a recent conversation with Employee Benefit News, Quinn breaks down how this approach can benefit everyone, and which financial benefits will take center stage in 2023.  

How has current financial instability impacted our approach to financial wellness in the workplace? 
There are a lot of things happening right now in people's lives that are impacting how they're interacting with and making decisions around their benefit programs and savings. You'll hear companies talk about generational demographics or income demographics, but the reality is they have different challenges. Do you spend more than you earn? Do you feel like you're living paycheck to paycheck? Do you pay off credit card debt every month? Do you have a major expense coming up? The more we can help an individual understand their financial behaviors today, we can help them analyze how they can make small changes to make managing that easier. 

When you think about the term "financial wellness," it's a bit of a catchall for any sort of financial benefit employers are offering. What's changing about this approach?
Financial wellness takes on lots of different forms. When that term first started taking hold, let's say 10 years ago, a lot of it was focused on just education around a benefit decision, like a 401(k), for example. Should I mix my contribution, or how should I invest my dollars? Whatever was done to help educate folks around that was termed "wellness." As we've matured as an industry and things have become more complicated with the pandemic and market volatility, what's become increasingly important is that a good wellness offering allows employees to bring into context their full financial life.  

Read more: Employees want financial wellness more than they want PTO 

That's been a really big focus for how we've developed our tools, our engagement strategies and the things we do for the participants that we work with. Because oftentimes unless that full context is there, they may be making a decision that's not fully informed. 

How is Bank of America utilizing technology to provide context for employees? 
We've done a massive amount of investment over the past few years in our digital offering. The base experiences around, here are your benefit offerings and here are your elections, that's all really strong. We also now offer a financial wellness tracker, which is an opportunity for an individual to complete a 12-question assessment around their financial behaviors, and we'll give them an action plan with three ideas that they may want to consider to help improve their financial behaviors. 

Read more: Overtime pay and private insurance: Top 10 work perks employees want this year 

We also do things like provide a retirement income forecast for them — here are your assets and here's what we think that will translate to as it relates to income possibility in retirement. We're also using artificial intelligence to look at all of the attributes of the individual around their behaviors and engagement, and tailor how we communicate around things they should be aware of or want to consider around their finances. That idea of individualization is really important for driving relevant engagement, and also making sure people are comfortable taking an action or making a decision that may be beneficial for them. 

When you're looking ahead to 2023, what are some of the financial trends employers should expect to address? 
One is retirement income and how we'll help employees draw down their savings. For the past couple of decades, our industry has been obsessed about the accumulation phase for individuals and helping them maximize what they save for retirement. We'll always have to focus on helping folks save appropriately, but now there'll be an equal amount of focus on helping people draw down in an effective and optimized way, what they've saved. 

We obviously spend a ton of time with the companies that we work with, making sure that they've got really effective and comprehensive plans for engaging and communicating to their employees. Employers are focused completely on financial wellness benefits and want to know, 'How do we get more people to use them?' The area where we need to stay focused is cracking the code on the most effective ways to get employees to not just receive a communication, but to take action.