Losing Income Through a Crisis
With the number of vaccinated Americans steadily increasing, the number of new COVID-19 cases steadily going down, and the American Rescue Plan providing much-need economic relief, Americans wanting signs of hope after a long year have a number of places…
Recordkeepers And Emergency Savings Webinar
With 37% of Americans unable to manage a $400 emergency with savings, and lower-income households, particularly Black, women-led households making under 60K per year disproportionately affected, the issue of emergency savings is an urgent one for much of America. COVID-19…
Pandemic Financial Strain: Innovations in Retirement & Emergency Savings
What is the financial impact of COVID-19 on low- to-moderate-income people? What do plan sponsors and recordkeepers need to know about emergency savings solutions to make informed decisions? What are the pros and cons of different types of emergency savings…
LMI Retirement Plan Participants’ COVID-19 Financial Strategies, Six Months In
As the end of 2020 nears, Americans are nearly nine months past the first COVID-19 economic impact payment, and the hopes for another stimulus before November’s election did not come to bear. Americans living on low to moderate incomes (LMI)…
How Commonwealth Partnered with UPS and Voya to Achieve an Emergency Savings Milestone
Recently, UPS announced the launch of an emergency savings program providing employees a way to set aside liquid after-tax savings easily and automatically. The program gives 90,000 non-union employees the ability to divert a portion of their paychecks into rainy-day…
Leveraging Retirement Platforms for Emergency Savings
As the COVID-19 recession pushes more and more Americans to the limits of their financial resources, retirement savings—usually considered an untouchable pool of funds—are increasingly functioning as emergency cash. With more Americans losing their jobs—and millions more losing supplemental unemployment…
What Are Americans’ Perceptions of Financial Insecurity?
According to a recent Commonwealth report, more than 80% of Americans agree that financial insecurity is a big problem. In today’s uncertain economic climate, where business closures and mass layoffs have become the new normal, this finding may not be…
Rethinking Employer-Sponsored Savings Accounts
In a matter of months, the economic devastation of the COVID-19 pandemic has plunged millions of people living in the US into deeper financial insecurity. Pre-pandemic, many Americans struggled to build and maintain emergency savings for even a minor unexpected…
How Recordkeepers Can Address Emergency Savings
Employer-sponsored emergency savings products were needed long before COVID-19, but the pandemic has both underscored and exacerbated the detrimental impact that financial insecurity can have on employee performance and retirement readiness. Although the CARES Act allows retirement plan participants to…
Saving Through a Crisis (1 of 2)
In the months since the outbreak of COVID-19, the pandemic has continued to expose and exacerbate cracks in people’s financial lives. In our latest research, Commonwealth partnered with the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association’s (DCIIA) Retirement Research Center on a series…