Embracing the Next Frontier:a Blueprint for Digital Success in the US Retirement Industry

The US retirement industry is globally prominent but has progressed slowly in digitalization due to access limitations, inadequate participant savings , lack of holistic wellness experiences, and a volatile market environment. Legacy systems further complicate matters, causing fragmented data sources, reporting challenges, and inconsistent user experiences.

Given these challenges, retirement firms must accelerate their digital transformation to improve participant and sponsor experiences. This paper highlights key areas within the retirement value chain where digital maturity sets leading enterprises apart, driving significant business outcomes. It also analyzes digital maturity across value chain elements and compares different recordkeeping models.

In this viewpoint we emphasize that retirement enterprises must modernize their technology landscapes, integrate data and intelligence, and invest in modern architectures to become future-ready digital leaders. We developed a framework to assess the digital maturity of the top 12 US retirement firms across the value chain. Our evaluation focused on their investments in actuarial and regulatory reporting, new business management, recordkeeping, and customer service, and investment management. We also analyzed publicly available investments from the past two years in digital workflows, self-service tools, omnichannel portals, mobile applications, data, cloud readiness, and advisor-focused solutions.

Furthermore, the Viewpoint examines third-party technology providers’ role in progressive modernization and how a retirement enterprise can augment them to obtain superior process outcomes. It also highlights the importance of progressive modernization and defines a roadmap for implementation.