Transforming employees’ experience with their health care can pay big dividends, particularly as the benefits industry moves toward a more consumer-driven model, says one official with a health assistance and advocacy company.

So I came across this article in Wired’s Good Design is Good Business that says: “A mix of factors, ranging from commoditization to evaporating barriers to competition, are conspiring to push design to the fore of business thinking”

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation announced a new proposal that will reverse its 2009 proposal and thereby reform and reduce reporting requirements for more than 90% of companies and pension plans.

As HR/Payroll outsourcers look to continue to attract more and in some cases smaller businesses to their outsourced model they increasingly look to build data integration with third party systems to gain efficiencies and drive down costs. Thus the intersection between Human Resource/ Payroll software and retirement services recordkeeping software (plan administration) is heating up.

Americans continue to hold their purse strings tight and favor cautious choices with their money, according to research from Northwestern Mutual.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report Wednesday saying that employees switching jobs often receive guidance by 401(k) companies to roll their accounts into an IRA, even when that might not be the best course of action. But what does this mean for advisers?

Among employees with adult/elder care responsibilities who’ve used Bright Horizons’ back-up care service within the last six months, nearly 70% said the benefit has allowed them to work on a day they would have otherwise missed.

Many are asking about retirement readiness self-analyses.

Humana Inc. led medical insurers higher in trading today after the U.S. government reversed a decision to cut a key Medicare payment rate, offering them an increase instead.

“Every company lives and dies by the talent it has access to,” says SendHub co-founder Garrett Johnson, who claims he could lose “invaluable” workers once the national supply of H-1B visas runs out.

The program, available to self-insured employers, offers some diabetes supplies and diabetes-related prescription drugs at no charge, as well as no copays for related doctor visits, at an estimated savings of up to $500 a year for participants.

Starting in 2014, workers at companies with fewer than 100 employees were supposed to have been able to choose from a variety of health plans through new small-business insurance marketplaces. They’ll instead wait until at least 2015.

Most participants are not contributing near enough to their 401(k) plans to adequately fund retirement.

A new study shows strong employer objections to state-run plans such as those recently proposed by legislatures in California and Massachusetts.

Freestanding ERs are among the fastest-growing areas of medical care, but many say the facility fees charged by them aren’t justified and lack transparency. Hospitals contend the facilities drain away the privately insured, high-paying patients they need to survive.

Consumers and some health insurers, led by Aetna, Inc., say the facility fees charged by many of the new ERs aren’t justified and lack transparency.

The largest exchange-traded fund tracking the $3.7 trillion U.S. municipal-bond market is selling at a discount to its underlying assets for the longest stretch since 2011.

If you’re an adviser who works with business owners, you know that the “retirement plan season” is the end of the year. It’s that time when many business owners decide to set up a retirement plan before the year end deadline.

A brokers’ role with end of life products is to know their clients and give them choices.

The burden of saving and investing has shifted to the plan participant