Donald Rumsfield, the former U.S. Secretary of Defense, once discussed "known unknowns," referring to things that we are aware we don t know. The idea can be applied to retirement plan participants as well. It is evident year after year that plan participants still lack a fundamental understanding of certain aspects of retirement planning, such as how to invest, how much to invest, and how to create a plan for retirement. These aspects remain widely misunderstood.

Enter the It's Your Move dashboard on Milliman's newly reimagined website. This dashboard aims to make participants aware of the tools at their disposal that can help them plan for retirement. The dashboard falls in line with other initiatives in the industry, all aimed toward improving employees' preparations for retirement. I've previously discussed how the working population in the United States is massively unprepared for retirement and suggested that "gamification" was a possible solution. The SaveUp app was cited as an example of the effectiveness that gamification can have on retirement planning.

Now there is another newsmaker with a similar name the Secure, Accessible, Valuable, Efficient Universal Pension Accounts (SAVE UPs) Act grabbing a few headlines. SAVE UPs is a new piece of legislation that was introduced by Representative Joe Crowley (D-New York). The main objective is to provide all American workers with the opportunity to generate tax-advantaged assets. The legislation intends to help smaller employers subsidize the cost of contributing to IRAs in the form of a tax credit for the value of the contributions to 10 employee accounts. This bill, if enacted, could be following down a very controversial path similar to that of, I shudder to say, healthcare.gov. Since the full name of this new legislation threatens to exceed the character limit of any tweet commenting on it, I figured it would be easier to discuss on this platform since the overall objective appears to be to help provide opportunities for more people to prepare for retirement. The new Milliman Benefits dashboard was created with the same goals in mind and has a significantly lower chance of becoming part of the script for the next season of House of Cards.

The new It's Your Move dashboard was designed to make participants aware of the various successful behaviors that will optimize their experience. With tools that help participants maximize company matches, diversify their investments, and utilize automatic increase and rebalance features, it could help to set new standards for best practices and increase participation rate in the plans that we manage.



Participant feedback has shown that a knowledge gap still exists in regards to retirement planning and investment decisions. A survey in March showed that 71% of participants were very likely or somewhat likely to seek advice from their plan providers and 69% were likely to seek advice from an independent advisor or financial services company. The advice they were seeking is on how to invest their money, what to do with their savings when they leave their employers, and what to do with the money when they retire. This shows that a majority of participants would like assistance in their retirement planning. The It's Your Move dashboard helps to do just that. This readily accessible checklist of retirement behaviors is making participants aware of the tools available to them in an effort to improve their retirement outcomes. It can help employees feel more confident about retirement and offer some encouragement and useful information along the way.