The Hire thru Retire Podcast
SUNY’s Michael Consorte
In this episode Bill is joined by the Director of University-wide Benefits at the State University of New York (SUNY), Michael Consorte. At SUNY Michael manages the plan sponsor team for SUNY's retirement plans along with supporting the administration and coordination of the SUNY employee benefits programs to better support the overall financial health and retirement success of the community.
With Open Enrollment in full swing, tune in to hear more from Michael about the perspectives of his workforce and SUNY’s supporting approach when it comes to the workplace benefits and savings needs of their workforce.
Bill Harmon is a registered representative of Voya Financial Partners, LLC (member SIPC).
CN 2570364
In this episode Bill is joined by the Director of University-wide Benefits at the State University of New York (SUNY), Michael Consorte. At SUNY Michael manages the plan sponsor team for SUNY's retirement plans along with supporting the administration and coordination of the SUNY employee benefits programs to better support the overall financial health and retirement success of the community.
With Open Enrollment in full swing, tune in to hear more from Michael about the perspectives of his workforce and SUNY’s supporting approach when it comes to the workplace benefits and savings needs of their workforce.
Bill Harmon is a registered representative of Voya Financial Partners, LLC (member SIPC).
CN 2570364
You're listening to The Hire Through Retire podcast with Voya Bill Harmon tackling all things from 401ks to HSAs and everything in between. We're talking to the best and brightest in the industry to bring you the latest in benefits, savings, and investment trends in the workplace. Come along with us on our journey to help all Americans become well planned, well invested, and well protected.
Speaker 2:Hello everyone and welcome back to the Higher Through Retire podcast. I'm your host, Bill Harmon. Thank you very much for joining me here today. You know, here we are. We just finished Halloween, so everyone had their sugar rush and we're coming down off of that. I'll tell you we're in another season and that's open enrollment season. This is perfect to have this great guest joining us here today to go and talk about really the complexities, the importance of open enrollment season. Joining me here today is Michael Korte Michael's the director of University-Wide Benefits at the State University of New York, or suny, as you'll hear us say, as SUNY Michael manages the plan sponsor team for SUNY's Retirement plans, as well as supporting the administration and coordination of the SUNY employee benefits programs. In this role, Michael spent much of his time providing guidance to the SUNY campus community on the retirement plans and benefits programs to better support the overall financial health and retirement success of this community. Without further ado, let me welcome Michael to our chat today. And boy Michael, thanks so much for being with us today.
Speaker 3:Hi, Bill. Hi everyone.
Speaker 2:I shared a little bit of your background up front and maybe we'll start out by, let's look little bit more about you and how you got here and hey, tell us how you get got into this business and how do you view, uh, your own role in helping participants secure better outcomes in retirement?
Speaker 3:I started life as a graphic designer, got my master's from Pratt after, uh, undergrad at Cornell. I thought I was gonna be a graphic designer or maybe an industrial designer and, and now I'm a retirement program designer. I found my way to financial services through PowerPoint. So working at Goldman Sachs, I was leading a, uh, document and document processing and presentations group, and we did a PitchBook overnight, stayed until two o'clock in the morning for one of the Goldman analysts and overnight we became the most popular group at Goldman Sachs and we had all the analysts coming and saying, What is this PowerPoint thing and we need it. That led me to Capital Group after a stint@a.com. So at Capital Group, uh, I headed up a presentations and then a content group working in conjunction with the relationship managers. There was an opening and one of my mentors in the relationship management group said, Hey, you know this stuff. Why didn't you give a try? Give it a try and be a relationship manager. Lo and behold, I became a relationship manager at Capital Group and uh, was in that role for roughly five years outta my 13 years there. Overall, I have really have built a second career. It's now over 20 years with financial services. So that is all to say everything that has led to this position. Although it was a really strange path, it got me to the absolute right job because every single day I get to help people retire and there's nothing better than that.
Speaker 2:First of all, I think just about all of us had some sort of circuitous route to get here because we didn't really major in this in college. So I'm so happy to hear you tell that story in that however it happened, you found your passion and to help others with your passion, um, really is something and you know, is it such important work and the, the approach that you take, you know, including both the employee benefits and, uh, the retirement to go ahead and get to that magical moment. I like how you, you keep that all together and when you're creating a design, cuz you're a designer mm-hmm.<affirmative>, uh, to serve your employees, you know, it's important to know well you, what's important to, for your employees, what is important to them. So can you talk a little bit more about the employee employee population at SUNY and how do you stay in tune with their needs?
Speaker 3:Well, uh, we have about 85,000 employees across, uh, 64 campuses. There are 29 state campuses and then, uh, the remainder being community college campuses. Of our 85,000 employees, I'd say roughly half are actively, um, enrolled in our optional retirement program, which is the 401K plan that my team sponsors. The other half are members of the solid and incredibly run New York State Pension and or the New York State Teachers Pension. Both plans, as you probably know, are, uh, incredibly funded. Whether our employees are signed up with our optional retirement program or with one of the state pensions, they can also participate in our retirement program through our supplemental 4 0 3 B plan, which we call the Voluntary Savings Plan. And at SUNY we wear two hats as employees here we are both university employees, so we can participate in the supplemental four three B, but we're also New York State employees so we can participate in the New York State deferred com 4 57 plan, which is run by a different group. Having the ability to save the vehicles for Save for Saving has been a real advantage for SUNY employees as with other large university systems. Not everybody's a a member of the faculty. Right. So I've heard, heard, uh, janitors and, uh, administrative assistants and others who, uh, I get to meet with participants at retirement forums and orientation sessions and they tell me, they're like, Oh, I didn't know that I could join the 4 0 3 b I thought that was something special for the faculty. No, you, you can, you can and you should be adding to what, um, the state is already contributing, uh, because we do have a, a rich contribution rate, um, on the four[inaudible] New York State actually provides for 8% employer contributions.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And, and if you add in the, uh, mandatory three to 6% sliding employee contribution, that's a pretty good start for someone saving for retirement. Uh, no matter what you're invested in, as long as you're saving, then you chance of having enough at the end of the accumulation phase, uh, would be greater back to the basics. Right.
Speaker 2:<laugh> no kidding. And, and that I gotta tell you, I mean that's, that's an amazing plan. I mean a series of plans. You've got this unique population, you've got a very diverse group in the sense that you have over 60 campuses all over the state. So I, I'd like to talk about what you just described there. So you have these employees that are all over the state, multiple, um, communities. You have multiple options when it comes to saving for retirement. So can you talk about, you know, if you talk about these different choices that they have, how do you and your team then support the workforce and making the best decision for their specific situation? Do I, do I go into the 4 0 3 B? Do I go into the 401k getting something from the state and find benefit? And maybe you could speak to how to integrate all of those and making those optimal decisions
Speaker 3:From day one of, uh, your employment at suny, you will be approached by multiple people on that first day and they will all share with you. You've got 30 days and the clock is ticking to choose whether you want to be a member of, uh, a New York state pension program or a member of the optional retirement plan that we sponsor. We do a lot of work helping people make that decision because it is irrevocable once you decide that's it, deciding between the two, there are tools that we use. There is a calculator out there by, um, that was designed by a third party that will, based on real data, they can do a pretty good guesstimate of what the funds you'll be receiving. It should you choose the pension, recognizing that, uh, you'd be entering as a tier six employee so that the, the benefits are not as rich as they once were before 2012, but they're still pretty solid.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot to be, be considering. Yeah. When you're making this decision and it's great you have those resources both with humans to help out and have a conversation as well as some technology to help out as
Speaker 3:Well. And and that's just the first, that's just the first decision. Right. And, and then, uh, let's say someone picked the optional retirement program, then they would have, uh, 366 days in which to vest and during that time they've gotta make another decision, a really important one. And that is, of our four providers, who are you going to entrust with your money? So we do quite a bit of, um, education on the different providers that we have, and Voya is certainly one of, uh, one of our providers, uh, and has been since, uh, 1994. So it's a very long relationship. Once they make that decision, then they come out investing after their first 366 days, they've gotta make some other decisions and, and so we reach out to them at that point and we share with them basically that if you're somebody though that does not enjoy, uh, the asset allocation puzzle and you've heard the industry mantra set in, forget it. We have a lot of people that actually come to me and my team members and say, No, I just wanna study and forget it. Then uh, we've got a plan for you too, Uh, because we have a really great target date fund series. And then of course we have folks who have really complex finances and they don't look at retirement planning on its own. They do all their financial planning holistically. Well, for those folks, we rolled out managed accounts on our Voya platform last year. We've got between the three, the target day fund, the, uh, lineup for the two yourselfers and the managed accounts. We feel that with the three different approaches baked into our program, that we have given our, our participants all of the different means to safe.
Speaker 2:And I like how you use kind of broke the groups down and how they think that it's act. And you even said, and it's daunting. It's daunting to say, I've got all these different types of plans and then I need to go determine where am I gonna put my money and what kind of person am I, If we were to take that maybe a little further mm-hmm.<affirmative>, so you've got these needs, then they're very different person by person in a very diverse, um, group of campuses all across the country, different employees within the campus, but the decisions are actually bigger than just retirement. It's looking into, um, employee benefits. And so those are another set of decisions, particularly now during open enrollment season, like we talked about. Maybe can you share the ways in which SUNY's been shaping its benefits as a whole, even in, in integrating retirement decisions within that whole overall scheme? How is that part of your design to go back to your design question, to help support the culture as well as your employees?
Speaker 3:There's one more thing that is, uh, unique about, not so unique these days, but it used to be quite unique and that is, ever since 1964 annuities have been built into our retirement program. So our employees can annuitize utilizing our institutional annuities when they're ready to retire. They've got some options as far as retirement income as well. Some of the things that are really popular at, uh, SUNY are, um, as New York State employees, we have access to healthcare and retirement, which is really great. You've got to have, you know, the years of service and you've gotta be a member of our, uh, great health program, nice ship when you retire and you've gotta be over 55. But if you've got those things, then you too can have healthcare in retirement, which I think goes a long way to retain our employees. And, uh, with the news last year that, um, folks in a pension can vest within five years rather than 10, it really makes the pension programs, uh, really popular right now, going back to, to non-retirement benefits, though there are a host of them among the population of folks like me who sponsor and administer benefits at suny, we all are a little bit geeky about our job and we, we definitely want to make sure that our benefits are a little better or a little more attuned, attuned to our own population. So I'll give you an example, um, on our long term disability program. I don't know if that many disability programs where when you are on disability, you're still getting contributions to your retirement program.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah. You don't have to give, uh, give that up simply because you are, um, you're on disability for that period of time. The state and Sunni are, uh, so great at providing rich benefits, uh, including, you know, really great vacation time, sick time, et cetera. Uh, we have pay family leave of course, uh, that was rolled out by the governor several years ago and that's proven to be quite popular as well. And they're constantly adding to it. So now you can take time off to take care of a sibling, for example. That'll be coming in January.
Speaker 2:You know, one of the top used phrases that we've had on this podcast is that the war for talent is real. And you even said it, you said, you know, I want my employees, the employees here at SUNY to appreciate the benefits. And they're quite frankly, better than many other employers. And so we recently did some research over here at Voya, specifically among retirement plan decision makers in the higher education sector. And one of the interesting points that we found was that a mid recruiting and retention challenges, So this war for talent, 90% of those survey agreed that a DC plan find contribution plan, retirement plan helps attract or retain or attract high quality employees. 87% agree that it helps to retain what you say the retirement plan is as big of a talent tool from your perspective, just like what we described from the results of that survey, or if not, you know, what is
Speaker 3:Absolutely it, it is certainly one of the tools in the proverbial toolbox, right? And for someone like me, for example, um, and a lot of our professionals, if you're saving for retirement and you're doing it as a team effort with your spouse, for example, like, uh, my husband and I do, then that benefit that you're able to save in two supplemental plans is huge, especially if you're married to someone who works for themselves or, uh, or work at an employer that doesn't offer, uh, as good a retirement program. All of our different tools working in conjunction with one another. One of the things that we did in um, coming back from covid was we did a pilot and in fact many employers at New York State did a, um, hybrid pilot where up to 50% of an employee's time can be working from home rather than in the physical office. And so my team has signed onto that. Several departments have signed onto that at, uh, system administration and then across our campuses. I believe all of our campuses have taken advantage of that work situation or, uh, the ability to have more flexibility as as far as uh, where someone, uh, works from. And that has helped it certainly, it's still in pilot form right now and I can certainly say that for my team it's worked quite well. In fact, in 2020 we did, uh, the entire year of working remotely and we found that we were actually getting even more done.
Speaker 2:And speaking of that, you know, when it comes to the retirement plan and really overall plan benefits, employee gate engagement, you mentioned it, it's, it's of course a huge factor to consider. And so for the retirement plan, one approach we've talked about on this podcast before is through different types of plan design. Your team recently won an industry award for your work introducing new ESG options, which is another topic we've had on this podcast. So can you talk about that effort and the engagement that you
Speaker 3:Achieved? We have investors that wanna put all their money into esg. So the responsible thing that my plan sponsor team can do for such an individual is make sure that we have all of the asset classes represented and we have the very best funds per asset class so that they really could build an ESG portfolio that wouldn't suffer from poor, uh, lineup design or poor asset allocation.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You could have a fully diversified investment allocation amongst multiple ESG funds and still do it. It said invest where your values are. And it sounds like that attracted employees to go ahead and be participants because
Speaker 3:Of that. It did in, in about a year and a half, we've attracted over 1.1 billion of Sunni money in these ESG funds.
Speaker 2:And I just love that that helped people get more engaged cuz you connected their values with their investments.
Speaker 3:It proved the thesis that we needed them.
Speaker 2:Yep. Yeah, and I think that's great for our listeners to hear sort of a cause and effect. I listened, there was a need, look what the outcome is. And so this has really been an incredible conversation, Michael, and you, you've offered some truly valuable insights that hopefully our listeners can take away and look to implement within their own plans. I mean, you're certainly covering a very diverse group of employees across the state and have different needs and so on. So there's a lot to take here. So let me end by asking one final question. When we started the podcast today, we were talking about your team's goals, but of course the goal for all of us in the retirement plan industry is to help provide greater outcomes for participants. What advice would you have for our listeners who are looking to implement some of the ideas or practices that we talked today on the podcast?
Speaker 3:Well, you know what, um, something you, you don't know about me is that I am an avid gardener and just like building and maintaining and improving a retirement program, you have to accept that gardens don't happen overnight and a lot of what looks great on the surface, um, there could be a lot of weeds hiding in there, right? I would say first of all, start with the basics. Does your plan have a solid lineup of investment options and the right number too? You don't want too many or too few. Are they priced at the right price and do you have the correct default for those that can't decide what to invest their money in? Start with that and then get some help if you don't already have help. So like our team, we hired our, uh, first consulting firm ever, uh, last year, and boy did we put them to work. And uh, it's been, uh, not even a year with Cap Trust, but they have been so helpful. And, uh, one of the things that we charge them with, with creating for us is a dashboard. And so we are in a process of working, actually being able to work using a dashboard that shows us where our plan members are, where our participants are on each of those 64 campuses and how are they engaging with the retirement program where they are. You wanna have the help, you wanna have the tools, you wanna have the technology, but you never wanna remove the human aspect of things, right? I do also wanna say two things. Um, you have to be intentional about what you're doing, so be intentional about hiring. You want a diverse team on your plan sponsor team because if you are a large organization or even an organization of over a hundred people, you're gonna find that you're gonna have a lot of diversity within your tent. And wouldn't it be great if you have someone on your team working alongside you that has those insights and that has those per perspectives that are necessary in order to engage with that diverse population and then don't stop there. Challenge your investment providers, your record keepers, to hire more, more of a diverse group because it takes a village to help our population, right? And once you've been intentional about that, then all of you can get together and focus on what my team calls the underserved 20%. If you really are able to help the lowest 20% or the 20% that are contributing the least or not contributing at all, of course you're gonna help everybody with that effort, right? And you're gonna apply that 20% rule, um, to any project. I believe we in the retirement industry need to be intentional in how we design retirement programs and in building the team, supporting those programs, that's the best way to empower participants to be more intentional about making their choices which affect their retirement outcomes.
Speaker 2:You used the word intentional several times in our conversation. I'm gonna throw something else, and you and I had a conversation recently about this. It's purposeful. You have passion and purpose and you could just tell that right away. And I'm so happy that you're in our industry providing that passion and purpose to help others. So I'm gonna thank you so much for that and for being part of the pod today. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3:Thanks, Bill. This has been a pleasure.
Speaker 2:So, uh, as always, I also want to thank all of our listeners too for joining us. Uh, thanks for coming along on our journey today. Stay well.
Speaker 1:This information is provided by Voya for your education only. Neither Voya North Representatives offer tax or legal advice. Any opinions expressed within, do not necessarily reflect those of the Voya family of companies or its representatives and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. Please consult your tax or legal advisor before making a tax related investment or insurance decision.