Retirement Transformation Generates ~$100M in Annual Savings

Challenge

A Fortune 50 global financial services company had a leadership mandate to align its expense ratios to industry benchmarks, while re-imagining their sales and service delivery model. The business was challenged with: 

• Lagging digital capabilities relative to competitors
• Inflated cost per participant (CPP) based on external benchmarking
• Compressed margins due to customized product offerings
• An inefficient service delivery model that didn’t support the business’s future strategy
  
  

Guidehouse was engaged to stand up the program to identify and implement recommendations to support the transformation effort. The program set in motion a series of initiatives across organizational design, location strategy, process re-design, and intelligent automation that succeeded in transforming the way they do business, while achieving run rate savings of $100 million within two years.

Solution

Guidehouse leveraged its transformation methodologies, frameworks, and tools to ensure the appropriate oversight and controls were in place to drive organization accountability and program success. Guidehouse worked with executives to develop and execute a comprehensive portfolio of change to achieve targeted outcomes.

The foundation for achieving the desired outcome was creating a structured process to allow us to focus our attention on the appropriate transformational ideas. Guidehouse committed considerable effort and resources to identifying these ideas using the following model:

Impact

By the end of the two-year program, Guidehouse, in partnership with executive leadership, was able to exceed cost-saving targets and improve the organizational design to better allocate resources, enhance digital engagement, and emphasize a culture of end-to-end accountability. Specific actions and outcomes include:

• Achieved > $100 million in run rate savings
• Reduced CPP from $156 to $115
• Developed Future-State Product & Service Offering to encourage and drive adoption of preferred products, services, and features
• Enhanced the sponsor portal to reduce manual intervention, improve data quality, collect structured data, and provide a view into the sponsor landscape
• Introduced self-service options to improve the customer experience and drive digital engagement:
  • Sponsor web: Provided an intuitive digital experience that simplified and streamlined existing processes for participants to utilize
  • Web chat: Allowed representatives to engage with participants who had more complex inquiries
  • Chatbot: Provided support for participants on a range of topics such as allocations/transfers, profile updates, loans, contributions, and withdrawals
• Supported the digitization of a high-volume print item to reduce print costs and drive digital client interactions
• Established end-to-end process ownership to ensure accountability for overall process health supporting institutional client experience
• Developed operational metrics package and staffing models to align organization to capacity needs
• Expanded the successes of the initiative by maintaining operational efficiencies from a business-as-usual perspective or via a follow-up initiative