Voya Launches New Digital Guidance Tool to Help American Workers Optimize Their Health and Wealth Benefits Selections

• Voya’s myHealth&Wealth tool offers personalized benefits guidance to help employees optimize their household spending across health insurance benefits, emergency savings and retirement
• Voya research shows majority of employees view benefits selection as a chore and want their employer to offer support to make it easier

Voya Financial, Inc., announced that it has launched a new integrated and holistic benefits selection experience myHealth&Wealth that offers personalized digital guidance to help employees optimize their household spending across health insurance benefits, emergency savings and saving for retirement. Powered by SAVVI Financial, a leading financial guidance company in the fin-tech space, Voya created myHealth&Wealth, a technology-enabled, interactive experience that helps employees think about their benefits contributions and savings as a total “benefits budget,” while providing individuals with a personalized action plan. The myHealth&Wealth digital tool will initially be available to Voya’s larger workplace clients and customers, as well as Voya’s own employees.

“Voya has conducted extensive research with both employers and employees to better understand sentiments around the convergence of health and wealth — particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic,” explained Rob Grubka, CEO of Health Solutions, Voya Financial. “On the employee side, a recent Voya survey found that 72% of employees eligible for benefits say they would prefer visiting the dentist, servicing their car or preparing for tax season over reviewing their benefit options.¹ As a result, it’s clear that many employees view managing their retirement plan and selecting and enrolling in their employee benefits as a chore.”

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“This sentiment concerning the complexities associated with managing multiple health and retirement benefits often rings true for employers as well. For example, Voya research revealed that the majority of employers (77%) are interested in integrated solutions²,” added Grubka. “And, employees also welcome digital tools that help them make more informed benefits decisions with their complete financial picture in mind. In fact, a separate Voya survey found that 7 in 10 employees (73%) are interested in guidance and support tools that would help them understand how much money to put aside for retirement, emergency savings and health care expenses.³ Voya’s new myHealth&Wealth online experience helps address these concerns among both employers and employees in an integrated and holistic manner, which we believe sets this guidance tool apart from others in the market.”

How does myHealth&Wealth work?

During their company’s open enrollment period, employees will receive an invite to access the myHealth&Wealth online experience. The interactive digital tool then guides the employee through a series of questions about their household, health coverage needs and overall savings goals. myHealth&Wealth then provides guidance and a personalized action plan to help employees optimize their household spending across health insurance benefits, emergency savings and retirement. Employees are also able to interact and use sliders to see how small changes to their budget can potentially have a big impact on their future savings goals. Furthermore, employees will have access to the myHealth&Wealth tool year-round to help manage any life changes throughout the year. Watch this brief demo video.

Prior to the national launch of myHealth&Wealth, Voya piloted this guidance tool last fall with a select group of workplace clients during their company’s 2022 benefits open enrollment period, including Voya’s nearly 6,000 employees. The feedback was extremely encouraging and resulted in employees taking a number of positive actions to help optimize their health and wealth benefits selections.

For example, Voya saw that those who used myHealth&Wealth had a better understanding of the trade-offs between their health insurance premium costs and other uses for their next dollar. This allowed users to make more informed decisions when selecting a health insurance plan that was best suited to help address their individual needs. Additionally, some users of myHealth&Wealth increased their retirement savings rate and/or elected additional supplemental health insurance — such as critical illness, hospital indemnity, disability income or accident insurance, for example — versus those employees who did not use myHealth&Wealth.

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“At Voya, we understand that health-related costs can have a significant impact on one’s ability to save for retirement. For example, according to Voya’s own retirement plan participant data, unexpected medical expenses are noted as the No. 1 reason for hardship withdrawals from a person’s retirement plan⁵,” explained Heather Lavallee, CEO of Wealth Solutions, Voya Financial. “As employees’ health and wealth needs remain inextricably connected, the need to harmonize one’s entire savings picture is becoming increasingly important. By creating technology-enabled solutions with the customer in mind, we are focused on helping individuals optimize their decision-making, which can ultimately help lead to greater financial outcomes.”

“Our innovative myHealth&Wealth guidance tool helps to pull it all together for employees in a simple, interactive and personalized experience,” added Lavallee. “The encouraging results from our pilot demonstrate that myHealth&Wealth can be a powerful tool for employers to help their employees make better sense of their competing financial needs and — more importantly — take meaningful actions to help advance their long-term financial goals.”

myHealth&Wealth is the latest example of innovative solutions Voya has introduced in recent years to help Americans holistically plan for their health and wealth needs. These resources include: Voya’s myHealthMoney digital assistant; Emergency Savings fund solutions; budget calculator; Spanish-language experience; and the Voya Learn digital educational platform, which offers live and on-demand sessions on a variety of topics, including saving for emergencies, investing concepts and market volatility, retirement income planning, debt management and more.

As an industry leader focused on the delivery of health, wealth and investment solutions to and through the workplace, Voya Financial is committed to delivering on its mission to make a secure financial future possible for all Americans — one person, one family, one institution at a time.

1) Based on the results of a Voya Financial survey conducted August 27-30, 2021, on the Ipsos eNation omnibus online platform among 1,003 adults, featuring 475 working Americans and 291 eligible for benefits, aged 18+ in the U.S.

2) Voya study conducted with McKinsey, 2021.

3) Based on the results of a Voya Financial survey conducted through Ipsos on the Ipsos eNation omnibus online platform among 1,005 adults aged 18+ in the U.S. (featuring 294 people who are currently working and benefits-eligible). Research was conducted Dec. 17-18, 2020.

4) Results from three pilot customers had a total of 8,700 employees eligible for the myHealth&Wealth tool; approximately 2,500 eligible employees used the myHealth&Wealth tool.

5) Based on Voya internal data (January 1, 2021 – July 31, 2021).

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