In many ways, financial wellness is a crucial part of employee wellbeing that employers ought to foster for an overall productive workforce. This is where companies like GoalPath Solutions can make a difference. GoalPath, a registered investment adviser (RIA) that acts as a fiduciary, has rolled out a holistic suite of financial planning, financial wellness, and asset allocation tools, materials, reports, and resources for both employers and their employees. The suite is designed to help employees achieve their unique target retirement income goals by their chosen retirement dates, which ultimately benefits the employer by reducing financial stress and delayed retirement dates.
In a recent interview with Manage HR’s editorial team, Marko Ungashick, GoalPath CEO, discusses at length his company’s services and how GoalPath leverages its in-depth industry knowledge and technical expertise to create cost-effective and results-oriented financial wellness solutions.
Can you give us the inception story of your company and its brief overview?
Let me start by saying that GoalPath enables employers to help their employees achieve their savings and spending goals in one easy-to-use, low-cost solution tailored to every individual’s unique situation.
As an advisory firm, our journey began ten years ago. Our goal has always been to drive better outcomes for individuals. We credit David Booth, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman at Dimensional Fund Advisors, and other folks at that company, for getting us started. They brought the U.S. financial crisis to my attention and called out the disconnect between someone’s investment approach based on their age versus their funded status, which is of far greater importance. That’s because not every 45-year-old is alike. Just because two people are the same age does not mean they have had the same financial journey. One person may be on track to reach their targeted retirement income, while another may be grossly underfunded or overfunded. Each person deserves their own unique plan based on their journey to date, not just their age.
The industry attempted to solve some of the investment issues by offering target-date funds, which have been adopted by 70% of Americans. These funds, however, fail to take other important criteria into consideration, such as income, current savings, annual deferral amounts, outside assets and desired retirement date.
Against this backdrop, we started thinking, ‘Okay, well, what are we going to do as an advisory firm to drive better outcomes for both employers and their employees?” That’s when we started looking at providing front-line engagement tools to help people, which led us to financial wellness – providing employees access to financial resources, technology, and coaching via a fully-integrated program.
Re-enter Dimensional who liked what we were doing and asked us, ‘Why aren’t you doing this for other advisory firms?’ And that’s where GoalPath Solutions was born. Through GoalPath, we can package our financial wellness program for other advisors to implement for their employer clients. And now, that’s just one of the many programs we offer in partnership with other advisors, but always with the mantra of driving better outcomes.
When it comes to financial wellness, what are some of the market pain points?
Financial wellness is in its infancy. If you ask ten different people what financial wellness is, you’re going to get ten different answers. When employers are asked why they offer these wellness programs, their answer, usually, is not that they are trying to improve their bottom line but because they want to help people because it’s the right thing to do.
GoalPath enables employers to help employees achieve their savings and spending goals in one easy-to-use, a low-cost solution tailored to every individual’s unique situation
Many people have lost access to defined benefit plans, leaving them dependent upon the 401(k). It’s not enough. HR folks and employers are struggling to weed through all the different available options – and there are a lot of complex and confusing options out there. We help them with their choices and make their lives easier.
Everybody’s financial situation is different. In today’s world, every individual probably has anywhere from 17 to 25 different engagement points with their finances. To organize all their finances, they need to manage credit cards, bank accounts, mortgages, insurance policies, and investment accounts, just to name a few. Our industry typically does not have a way to help individuals who don’t have highly investable assets, which is a critical problem for a majority of the U.S. Our program provides help to everyone regardless of whether they have investable assets.
Could you elaborate on your client onboarding methodology?
Our favorite story is about the individual who, despite having various accounts, doesn’t know how to create his or her own financial wellness foundation. As the initial step, we take everyone through a financial assessment and an account aggregation exercise that brings all their information together displayed on one screen. It’s designed to help them establish a better relationship with their money.
For instance, individuals approach us who are tired of saying no to going on a vacation or buying a new sofa because they’re on a tight budget. We help them develop a different story by making them understand the need to put their financial house in order. By taking care of their fixed expenses and organizing their affairs, they have a much higher probability of saving plenty of discretionary income.
We help them by organizing a way to bring in and allocate their income. They are usually surprised by the size of their mad money accounts, which gives them the freedom to spend based on their plans and needs. It takes just the slightest effort to get your financial house in order. We believe most people, regardless of income, can fund their mad money accounts with just a little bit of work.
We spend about six weeks going through a very detailed launch strategy with each employer and try to make it as unique as possible for their respective companies. We have the ability to deliver messaging and other resources based on each company’s needs. They all have a different way of communicating to their employees. We work with them to craft that unique message, and every single person gets a personalized experience.
We develop Program Champions, a group of people at each employer who are educated on the platform, to help their peers understand the program. When you’re launching a program like this, we believe peer-to-peer education is critical. And then, every individual is given the opportunity to have a one-on-one with a financial coach who is a certified financial planner (CFP). This level of engagement and fulfillment is critical. In order to help the masses, we have designed our program for scale and we’ll onboard 60 to a hundred employers over the next 12 months.
What differentiates your company from other players in the market?
For everyone looking at GoalPath Solutions as a financial wellness partner, fulfillment is our biggest differentiator. Our significant competitive advantage is how fast we can assist an advisor trying to help their employer provide a huge value to their employees. That’s because, with us, they don’t have to invest in technology or invent a program from scratch. We can have a fully customized program up and running for an employer in 90 days.
We know that we need to reach a lot of people. We are building efficiencies and figuring out how to get that to hundreds of employers annually. We can achieve this goal with our tech stack and how we provide services to our customers. Our goal is to serve as many people as possible.
We have an internal message of “just one, next one.” This concept works because we know if we help just one person get their financial house in order, the impact on that individual and the employer is immense. We have to be top of mind, available, and ready to help every individual understand what they are trying to accomplish and then help them with executable solutions.
What does the future hold for your company?
Our mantra has always been to drive better outcomes which ultimately led us to offer financial wellness fulfillment. A financial wellness program without engagement and scalable execution just doesn’t drive better outcomes. I firmly believe that financial wellness programs are here to stay and that more and more employers and local advisors will look to partner with providers that have a proven track record of driving engagement and results. We track all our coaching engagements using net promoter score and our feedback has been exceptional from both our employers and employees.
For the future, our focus is on expanding our services while simultaneously overcoming the challenge of maintaining quality—something that we are confident we can accomplish based on our team’s focus, expertise and our lasting partnerships.
