Retirement Tech in 2026 AI, Operational Efficiency, and Better Participant Experience

00:00 Johnny Manell

Joining me now, Jessica Calabrese.

00:02 Johnny Manell

She’s the head of retirement product strategy at FIS Global. Jessica, it’s great to see you. Thanks for joining us this morning.

00:10 Jessica Calabrese

Yes, great to see you. Thanks for having me.

00:13 Johnny Manell

You know, I’m always excited. I have to say, I like talking technology. I I think it’s a really big part of our business and I’m excited to talk to you because I think there’s an evolution going on.

00:23 Johnny Manell

Let me let me start by asking you what I think is a very establishing question. And and I want to ask, are are retirement are your clients even more demanding?

00:30 Johnny Manell

And when I think of your clients, I think of the record keepers, but they have clients too, plan sponsors and participants.

00:36 Johnny Manell

Are they demanding even more from their retirement ecosystem?

00:42 Jessica Calabrese

Yeah yes. Um, they have to, I think because more is constantly being demanded of them as well. And the world around us is changing.

00:52 Jessica Calabrese

So participants, especially those coming up in the in the newer generations, they expect experiences and services the way that they get it outside of their workplace 401k plans or retirement plans.

1:04 Jessica Calabrese

So they want instant access to information. They want help, they want intuitive experiences. Um, they want, they want advice.

1:12 Jessica Calabrese

And they want it at at the touch of a fingertip, right? They want it when they get on their phone. You can do a Google search today and you suddenly you’re in an AI experience where the next questions are thought for you already.

1:21 Jessica Calabrese

You don’t have to think of them on your own.

1:24 Jessica Calabrese

So I think, yeah, please, go ahead.

1:26 Johnny Manell

No, I was I was going to follow up and just say ask you, so when you talk to clients and you again, your clients are the major financial institutions in the United States and probably around the globe as well. What what are they saying are their clients’ biggest needs? Is it access to information? Is it operational efficiency? Is it artificial intelligence?

1:44 Johnny Manell

or all the above, right?

1:44 Jessica Calabrese

Yeah, it’s all of the above.

1:47 Jessica Calabrese

Yeah, because the the end consumers, the participants who are ultimately here to serve, help educate them, help them save and achieve their best outcomes. They’re they’re looking for more.

2:00 Jessica Calabrese

The plan sponsors are looking for options that best meet their demographic of employees. and and those demographics of employees are are vast. We serve everybody, we serve all Americans.

2:13 Jessica Calabrese

Um, so the sponsors are looking for more, they’re looking for products to meet the needs of their their employees, and they’re looking for them at low cost. Puts a lot of pressure on the record keepers, right? Like they have to be operationally efficient. The margins are tightening all the time. Um, and they have to be able to serve their sponsors, the participants, work with the advisors.

2:38 Jessica Calabrese

They have to offer multiple products, multiple services, Omni channel experience. So, you know, they really need technologies and platforms that can integrate all of this and keep it cohesive and and very intuitive.

2:50 Johnny Manell

Yeah, so it’s definitely not when I was, we were joking beforehand that, you know, when I came in the retirement industry, we did everything on the team, we processed transactions, we answered phone calls, everything. It it’s not and I had hair. But we it’s not the same. It’s really an evolution. It’s it’s a changing world and I guess my next question is, with that in mind, how do you as an organization and you in particular remain nimble

3:07 Johnny Manell

and agile, uh, to be on your toes because, you know, you’re getting legislative changes, regulatory changes, technology changes. That’s got to keep you your make your head spin in some ways.

3:18 Jessica Calabrese

It it does. And you know, it’s been very challenging. Um legacy technology has made things very challenging because as we’ve evolved, it’s not just keeping the core transaction system in the book of record compliant with the regulations, it’s leading that digital experience so that that the participants can truly take advantage of these legislations that are there to serve them and to drive them to better outcomes.

3:45 Jessica Calabrese

So modernizing the technology and consolidating platforms is the key to being able to stay agile, introduce um automation, AI efficiencies, and really be able to keep up with the regs in the way that we want to.

4:06 Johnny Manell

I I would imagine you do a lot of reading.

4:08 Johnny Manell

I I mean you got to be, but maybe you read it, do you read it on your phone? Do you read it in an email? How do you how do you personally, I’m just curious, how do you consume information because you you got all these things coming at you. You got to you got to be at the tip of at the tip of your fingertip, you have to have the information.

4:21 Jessica Calabrese

Yeah, I mean, it is nonstop for sure. Um, we, you know, here at FIS, we try to get out into the industry forums as much as possible. I think networking with our peers and other leaders and experts across the industry is a great way to stay informed. Um but yeah, I mean if I have 10 minutes, I can go on LinkedIn and I’m consumed and maybe even overwhelmed that overwhelmed at times with just great insights, information, thoughts, things that are happening, um that maybe aren’t going well.

4:51 Jessica Calabrese

Learning from from some of those failures and mistakes is often uh the most insightful. So lots on the phone, lots on the computer and lots in person.

5:01 Johnny Manell

Yeah, you’re going to have to get some meta glasses I think or whatever the glasses are called and it’ll just be like shooting it into your brain.

5:07 Jessica Calabrese

Press the button and it just goes in, right?

5:09 Johnny Manell

That would be, yeah, that would be ideal.

5:10 Jessica Calabrese

Yeah.

5:11 Johnny Manell

Yeah, uh, so let me ask you about the the evolution of the investment lineup. Um, you know, when when I think for the most part it was target day funds, uh, in, you know, the core investment lineup, maybe self-director of brokerage, now manage accounts, but I I have to think that you have seen this explosion of investment products that you need to consider building an architecture around.

5:35 Jessica Calabrese

Yeah.

5:36 Jessica Calabrese

Yeah, so I I think, you know, first and foremost, what I would say is those investment lineups, the target dates, the managed accounts. I think we’re still focused on those, but we’re really looking at optimizing and getting the value that those investment vehicles have to offer. Um, it goes back to the participant and being able to really personalize their situation and help guide them to the best decisions possible.

6:01 Jessica Calabrese

The aggregation of data, outside accounts, other products and services that they have, so that they know where to put their next dollar and their money. And then also just plainly, um educating them on what what is a managed account? What is a target date fund? So I think there’s a lot that is still going on in that space.

6:21 Jessica Calabrese

I think we’ve made a lot of progress. I think we have a little bit more ways to go so that participants get into their workplace site and they’re like, oh, this makes so much sense. I’m going to, I’m going to use this target date but in this manage account option because I’m going to get X percent increase, for example. Um so I think we’re making good traction there.

6:39 Jessica Calabrese

But to your point, that is not enough, right? Because the next things are coming. CITs are being approved for retirement plans, alternative investments are available, and these types of investment vehicles require different trading, different liquidity structures, different education, different participant experiences.

6:58 Jessica Calabrese

So always um trying to optimize what we have but prepare for the future. And I think a key to that is our partnership strategies, making sure we’re not trying to do everything on our own, right? This is a big industry. There’s a tremendous amount of experts. So we’re we’re very focused on who are the best that we can partner with and with our modern technology build those integrations so that everything is seamless and it comes together in the ecosystem.

7:27 Johnny Manell

And you can’t be, uh, to your point, you can’t be biased towards one type of product. You know, you can’t be all in for example in CTs when there are mutual funds, there are variable annuities, right? I mean, you have to be in some ways, this is not a condescending term, but you have to be all things to all people. You really have to be able to partner with everybody.

7:48 Jessica Calabrese

That that is our goal as a technology provider, right? We’re not the advisor, um we’re not the asset manager. We trust, we select partners and evaluate partners that we think are like you mentioned earlier, truly here to serve the the needs of the participants, the outcomes of the participants, um help our record keepers with efficiency. We we just talked about a lot of things that we have to do, but we can’t drive price up, like price has to come down.

8:16 Jessica Calabrese

So, yeah, we we look to find partnerships, um and we rely on those partnerships for the expertise that they bring to the table and to the participants.

8:21 Johnny Manell

Yeah, I would imagine that in terms of the the language that is being used to code, you no longer are you still using you don’t still use Cobol. I grew up using Cobol. That’s how old I am. I mean, there’s Java, there’s all these sequel, right? I mean, so the the evolution has also occurred there in terms of the underlying programming.

8:41 Jessica Calabrese

Yeah, absolutely. I’m I’m delighted that you asked that because we are launching our Java platform, AWS Cloud hosted. um like right at this moment it’s happening. So, uh be on the lookout for more details on that press release, but it’s it’s really an exciting time.

8:54 Johnny Manell

Yeah, uh, I’m dating myself. But I look, I still could be dangerous if you if you need a business analyst, I could probably look at some coball for you.

9:00 Jessica Calabrese

We do. We need we need all the all the hands.

9:01 Johnny Manell

Yeah. Uh, let me ask you about artificial intelligence because this is a topic that I think is really hit every industry, you know, from even the military and defense to to retirement. Where where are you seeing the deployment of artificial intelligence? Is it the writing of the Java code or the or the code? Is it operational efficiencies? Where where or is it like chatbots or all the above? Where are you seeing it being deployed?

9:18 Jessica Calabrese

It’s everywhere. Um, so, you know, we think about just even personally, we’re all thinking about using AI in our personal lives. Um, I just planned my daughter’s graduation party, so I used, you know, my chatbot to help me organize and stay on track. And as I sit here day-to-day and do my my work and go through my emails and organize my meetings and my notes and my actions, Co-pilot is a great tool to to make me more efficient. So we see it

9:43 Jessica Calabrese

there in the simplest forms. We absolutely are leveraging it in our development practices with coding, testing, writing requirements. We are um also focusing on how do we service our clients better? When they call into our support centers, how do we help our analysts use AI to sift through all the all the fixes, all the informations, the resolutions, the knowledge bases.

10:07 Jessica Calabrese

And then absolutely looking to enable and fuel our products with better data and AI enablement. So when we think about AI, we we think a lot about how can we harness the power of all the data that we have, so we can serve up those those insights and actions. Sometimes to our partners, because partners already have great uh models and methods. So can we help them make their tools better? But in our participant experience, for example, participants, they they are on this journey, right?

10:41 Jessica Calabrese

When they come into the workplace, they might have a student loan. They need to think about emergency savings, they’re buying homes. Um, they they are contributing to their 401K and their HSA. So how can we guide them through those journeys with insights, actions, other questions they might want to be asking. Um so we’re we’re looking at AI in all those ways.

10:59 Jessica Calabrese

And what I will say is we’re also looking at what is it AI going to look like next year or five years? because I think many of us are shocked at what it looks like today. Like the pace and the evolution of it has been so fast and so transformational. Um so we’re also very focused on where do we need to be uh, you know, next year and and two years from now.

11:21 Johnny Manell

Yeah, I I I would say, I mean, is it your opinion today at least, I mean, you know, a lot of people talk about AI, at least in the popular press, AI is going to replace like I’m not even going to have a job. They’re just going to like digitize me and then they’re just going to do shows every every few minutes, right? So I think there’s a big fear that, you know, record keeping, you know, when I was growing up, we did a lot of things.

11:39 Johnny Manell

We had access to information, but there was also that customer service aspect. So so do you think we’re going to get to at least in the next one 12 months to five years, we’re going to get to a fully automated experience where the the the participants just going to interact with the technology and and you know, Jeff Sneider’s going to go the way of the Dodo bird.

11:55 Jessica Calabrese

I I don’t think so. Um at least not in the next, you know, three to five years. I think first and foremost, we still need people who know how and where we should use the AI and and to curate those AI scenarios and to govern it. The governance is extremely important and you know, keeping the human in the loop. Um I think we’re going to learn a lot in this next year and as I mentioned earlier, some of that learning is going to be through mistakes or through incidents.

12:18 Jessica Calabrese

So there’s going to be a couple steps back and a couple steps forward. Um but I do think all of us should be learning how to use AI and the jobs we do today are going to be done very differently. And if you don’t know how to leverage AI to do your job better and and drive your outcomes better, then you probably will get replaced is is kind of how I think of that.

12:36 Johnny Manell

Yeah, I you know, I’m just kind of thinking about all of you in a in a room and you’re all wearing lab coats. You guys wear lab coats as your uh in in your office day-to-day. You know what I mean?

12:44 Jessica Calabrese

Just goggles. We got protective glasses, yeah.

12:46 Johnny Manell

And maybe maybe the meta glasses, right? Because I I see you all in lab coats and you’re just like like that.

12:54 Jessica Calabrese

I don’t know. We’re doing a lot of stuff. Yeah, and I’ll share an experience. So I I recently had to um schedule a doctor’s appointment for my daughter and the uh whole scheduling taking my information, um was done by an AI avatar type of um person on the phone. That’s the first time I’ve really seen it goes like from start to finish, got me scheduled. Um, was a really good experience. Like and the it was very per it still felt personal, personal. So that was that was interesting.

13:19 Jessica Calabrese

But when I got my daughter to the doctor’s office to get her cast put on, she still needed a person to do that for her. So, I think there’s places for AI, but I do I do think there are still places for humans and individuals and our thought and that’s not going to go away.

13:28 Johnny Manell

Yeah, well, well said. Jessica, it’s a pleasure meeting you. Thanks so much for joining us. And look, maybe you’ll come back. We look forward to having you back on the program again very soon.

13:36 Jessica Calabrese

Yeah, thank you again. It’s been a pleasure.

13:39 Johnny Manell

Well, thanks for watching and don’t forget we’re back again tomorrow morning with another great expert and another great topic. You can tune in right here Monday through Sunday at 7:30 a.m. Eastern time. And don’t forget to subscribe to our daily newsletter, the Morning Pulse for all the news in one place delivered directly to your email box. Check it out at our website.