Significant tax changes are coming for pension agencies – is your organization prepared?

What should you look for in a pension administration software (PAS)? While different organizations have different needs, there are a few key features that a potential solution should have. If you caught our previous blog, we walked through the key questions helpful for analyzing the best solution for your organization. Here, we’ll show you the key features a potential solution should provide. Remember, in an industry inundated by continually changing policies, PAS vendors should meet your needs for both the long and short-term.

Choosing a pension administration software (PAS) is a monumental task. Your decision could affect your organization for years or (most likely) decades to come. Dealing with fragmented and outdated technology that can't evolve poses a significant business challenge. Due to limited staff and budget constraints, coupled with the continually changing nature of the industry, choosing the right solution is critical.

The National Pension Education Association (NPEA) annual conference is always a great forum to discuss how retirement education and communication initiatives can help members, employers, and agencies. This year was no different. We had great conversations and learned a lot from our clients, peers, and all attendees. We also found that most are also interested in talking to their peers (or identifying peers they can talk to) to get lessons learned and see how they’ve tackled different issues – I hope this blog throws some light on what is important to participants we spoke to.

Are you well versed with pension/retirement terminology? If not, take a go at our pension alphabet.

While every public pension agency has their unique differences, a common purpose unites them: to maintain the financial security of the trust fund and provide exceptional service to external stakeholders. In terms of protecting pension funds, there are numerous investment strategies to close the funding gap: using asset monetization and dedicated revenue sources, issuing well-designed pension obligation bonds, closing tax loopholes, among other tactics. Investment strategies aren’t the only way to maintain the sustainability of the plans, however. By updating the technology that is used to administer pension benefits, pension agencies can ensure financial security while simultaneously achieving customer service excellence.

On July 1, 2017, Cost of Living Adjustments (COLA) will go into effect at a majority of pension agencies across the country. COLAs protect members’ annuity from inflation erosion, but without a modern benefits administration solution, COLAs can erode the patience of the staff trying to administer them.

Less than 30 years ago, defined contribution (DC) retirement plans were a rather novel retirement savings vehicle. Now, DC plans are the most popular employer-sponsored retirement plan in the United States, according to the American Benefits Counsel.  Within the public sector, DC plans are playing an ever more increasing role in state and local retirement programs.

Part 3: Using web analytics data to identify insights and develop business strategy

When it comes to a web analytics strategy, organizations go through a natural progression. The first step in the process is to develop a method for capturing the data. As the first blog post in this series states, many organizations are finding Google Analytics (GA) to be a helpful and cost-effective web analytics service. Once the data is captured, the next step is to develop a data reporting strategy. The second blog post delves into how one can use GA’s basic reporting functionality to apprise business leaders. The next stage is to use the captured data and reports to identify insights and develop business strategy.

Let’s stop beating our heads against a brick wall: 4 fundamental disconnects with outmoded contract terms and conditions

In the last decade, state and local agencies changed the way they implement large software modernization projects; however, the same is not true for the contracts that govern these projects. For this article, we discuss four categories of terms and conditions that are outdated and don’t reflect the evolution of software products or the product implementation approaches required for today’s modernization projects.  Consequently, vendors, procurement professionals, lawyers, and client leadership spend significant time, money and emotional capital trying to solve the proverbial “fit a square peg in a round hole” conundrum during negotiations.