BPAH is pleased to announce the rollout of Masterypoint – a comprehensive investment education and guidance suite within our participant website. Masterypoint serves as a replacement and upgrade of our previous education application, and is available to all plans and participants as of August 22, 2008.
To access Masterypoint, please visit the Education tab of the participant website and select the first link on the navigation bar. (The site can also be found within the education tab of the plan sponsor website). The site consists of several modules:
- Education module – This module helps employees understand the basics of retirement investing — including such topics as average life expectancy, the effects of inflation, realities of Social Security, the benefits of pre-tax investing, tax-deferred compounding, rollovers and other topics. It also helps de-mystify the subject of investments – discussing key asset classes and their performance over time, active versus passive management, the different types of investment risk and investing for the future.
- Building module – This module helps the participant construct a retirement income strategy through a hands-on working session. The employee is asked to complete a planning worksheet to provide various data inputs. The application will then help the employee determine whether or not they are on track in their retirement journey. This includes a recommended course of action, including the amount the participant should be saving, an appropriate timeframe for retirement and a set of sample portfolios based on the results of a risk questionnaire and other factors. This part of the application should be considered “investment guidance”.
- Additional planning tools – Masterypoint also includes a calculator for loans outside of the retirement plan, a paycheck calculator to illustrate the effect of before-tax savings on the employee’s take home pay, a retirement plan loan calculator to determine the total cost of a retirement plan loan, and a college planning module.
This website enhancement is provided to clients at no cost. We encourage participants to take full advantage of this new program to make the most out of their retirement journey