Vestwell, the small business retirement plan provider and individual savings platform, announced significant upgrades “to its proprietary recordkeeping platform designed for the small plan market.”
Through a series of strategic enhancements, Vestwell’s technology “solves some of the most complex challenges faced in the history of the 40-year retirement industry.”
The most common processes of a recordkeeping platform “have been dramatically improved, giving users five times more efficiency than any traditional, legacy recordkeeping platform on the market today.”
Aaron Schumm, Founder and CEO of Vestwell, said:
“Eighteen months ago, we set out to raise the bar, once again, creating a multi-custody, multi-savings program architecture, which could process traditional tasks at speed, scale, and efficiency levels never before attained in the industry. Today, we have delivered the infrastructure on which the workplace and individual savings programs will run over the next twenty-plus years.”
Aaron added:
“To continuously solve these multi-layered, highly-complex industry challenges, we combined the expertise of our industry leaders and software engineers, who have been working on recordkeeping technology since our inception.”
The enhancements “establish a better user experience for all Vestwell partners and customers, including financial advisors, third-party administrators (TPAs), asset managers, employers, and savers.”
Vestwell can now “connect to any custodian while providing TPAs and financial advisors greater flexibility to run and scale their practices.”
Through planned enhancements, the new architecture will also “power each workplace and individual savings program Vestwell enables within a single, multi-custodial platform.”
Those utilizing the Vestwell recordkeeping platform for their businesses “will benefit from an elevated experience at a fraction of the cost of legacy platforms.”
Payroll is “at the forefront of the workplace savings industry, and processing any corrections that arise places a heavy administrative burden on small businesses and their limited resources.”
Vestwell’s latest enhancements “process payroll corrections in real-time, as compared to the typical week-long industry norm.”
Jonathan Ferrara, SVP of Platform Strategy and Architecture at Vestwell, remarked:
“Our experience building out proprietary recordkeeping technology taught us that in the small plan market space, how you handle the ‘unhappy path’ makes all the difference. Small businesses do not typically have a dedicated payroll person, which can result in more mistakes compared to larger businesses. We found that legacy solutions could not efficiently handle the frequency of these scenarios so we decided to reshape our own accounting tech stack to be more operationally efficient, deliver more value, and provide a superior experience to our client base.”
Vestwell’s recent platform upgrades also “improve the saver experience. Savers who request to withdraw funds from their savings programs for financial hardship, a job change, or other reasons are now able to access their withdrawn funds in two business days.”
The antiquated industry standard “for withdrawals has been a week or more.” Vestwell’s portal also provides savers “with greater visibility into where their money is during each process step, so savers have a clear understanding of when they can expect their funds.”
