Bank of America Merrill Lynch introduced in early March a new tool for use by its 401(k) plan sponsor clients designed to monitor and score the "financial wellness" of employees enrolled in their plans. The Financial Wellness Monitor, is being offered free to clients and calculates an overall "Financial Wellness Score" indicating to employers whether employees are exhibiting behaviors within their retirement plan that may lead to successful long-term savings.
"A positive score is based on such metrics as how much employees are saving within the plan; are their assets appropriately diversified or are they allocating/using target date funds improperly; are they fully benefiting from their company match; or are they too heavily concentrated in company stock," according to a BofA Merrill Lynch spokesman.
The BofA Merrill spokesman says that from February through April 2010, the Financial Wellness Monitor is being rolled out to more than 300 plan sponsor clients who use the Merrill Lynch Advice Access service-"an unbiased savings and investment advice service that can be tailored to an individual employee's life stage and personal situation." Later this year, the spokesman says, Bank of America Merrill Lynch will "further refine the tool's scoring methodology in order to make it broadly available to all if its more than 1,500 plan sponsor clients."
