Like a trick-or-treater’s bag, heavy with an assortment of candy at the end of Halloween, this October offered a bit of everything…

Retirement gets social

After first launching a beta version in February 2008, TIAA-CREF made its retirement-focused online community, MyRetirement.org, publically available this month. MyRetirement is one of the broader online communities we have seen to date. Instead of focusing entirely on products, or featuring commentary exclusively from firm employees, TIAA-CREF provides customers with an open platform on which they can discuss retirement, as well as other topics of interest. TIAA-CREF’s decision to launch a beta version of the community was also significant; doing so allowed the firm to seed its discussion boards with user-generated content, meaning that when MyRetirement was officially opened, new users were able to join active conversations.

Putnam’s new blog, the Retirement Savings Challenge, launched this month, hosts retirement-focused commentaries from the firm’s financial professionals. The blog is part of Putnam’s new initiative to re-evaluate current workplace savings programs. Curiously, if you enter retirementsavingchallenge.com (without “the” in the beginning) into your browser you’ll be redirected to ING’s retirement site.

Rethinking pensions

The volatility in financial markets over the past year has firms rethinking traditional metrics for retirement planning. John Hancock and Hartford Life are tailoring new annuity products to combine the fixed payout structure of traditional pension plans with the investment potential of popular defined benefit plans, such as the 401(k). Hartford’s recently released Personal Retirement Generator is a hybrid variable annuity that contains two investment components – a tax-deferred growth component and a separate income component called the personal pension account.

In other news…

  • Fidelity Launches Global Trading Platform – The firm expanded its online brokerage platform by offering trading in twelve foreign markets. The ability to trade international securities is currently limited to the firm’s Gold Commission Level clients and allows those clients to trade with eight different local currencies.
  • Help Me Choose – In coordination with the rebranding of several pre-existing credit cards and the release of a new ATM card, Citizens Bank introduced a new card selection tool called Help Me Choose. The tool helps determine an appropriate debit or credit card for users by asking them questions about their personal checking and combined account funds. While other firms offer interactive tools to aid prospects in selecting a credit card, Citizens Bank is the only firm that provides a tool to help select a suitable debit card.
  • American Express Introduces New Tool – American Express launched a Money Manager Account Aggregator tool that allows AmEx charge card holders to manage both internal and external bank accounts in one place.

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