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Senior Retirement Tips :: Great West Retirement Services
Great West Retirement Services: Considering Retirement Services from Great West
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Great West Retirement Services is a branch of Great West Life insurance that provides retirement services and products to corporate and government or institutional clients.
They do not sell their retirement planning services to the individuals or members of the public. Instead, they manage plans for companies.
The firm is currently responsible for more than 3.5 million retirement accounts across the country. If you're considering hiring or choosing Great West Retirement Services for your business's retirement savings plan, keep reading for a complete review.
Great West Retirement Customer Service
Great West customer service is fantastic when they're selling a retirement services plan, managing it or setting it up. They're right there to help you set up a program and they're there to help you with record-keeping, documentation and other related services.
Where Great West always seems to falter is on the individual contributor's level. Participants must dial a 1-800 number to talk to a representative.
At that point, they're put on hold and then often left with questions unanswered. The company will provide workshops at the workplace and provide literature, but they need to drastically improve their contributor customer service.
However, they do excel at record keeping and all the administrative services associated with managing a retirement or 401(k) plan. Their ability to provide consistent documentation and records might be why they're the number one provider for state government plans and the overall government market.
Finally, their web services – participants who belong to corporate 401(k) plans can offer web services that include online enrollment, investment options and a possible self-directed investment and brokerage account. Unfortunately, these web tools are convoluted, hard to use and barely supported.
Great West Retirement Reputation
Great West's retirement services branch has a strong reputation when it comes to their customer service for corporate clients. However, the company's reputation falters when dealing with the individual contributor.
Unfortunately, their reputation has been tarnished in the past by offering “bundled” services that depend heavily on the firm's own mutual funds. For example, in 2004, Jet Aviation dropped Great West after learning that the company's bundled plan consisted of over 60% of funds that were managed by Great West.
In 2005, Great West was required to pay the Milwaukee County over $1.57 million after overcharging them for fees for a period of eight years.
The Final Word
Like any insurance company or retirement plan management firm, Great West Retirement Services has had its ups and downs. Overall, the company gets the job done and for a good price, but there are better firms out there when it comes to customer service for the individual contributor.
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SeniorRetireTips.com :: Great West Retirement Services