Blog : DC Retirement | November 19, 2025

From insight to impact: Unlocking opportunity using plan analytics

This is the fourth in an ongoing series: Well on Your Way® with Dina

Dina Caggiula
Principal and Head of Participant Experience, Vanguard Workplace Solutions

Hello! In my previous blog posts, I’ve shared how Vanguard continually seeks new ways to help participants achieve financial well-being. Today, I want to shine a light on you—the plan sponsors—who are at the heart of making these positive changes happen.

Your role goes far beyond just offering a retirement plan. You’re helping your employees and their families build brighter financial futures. You’re critical in driving impact for not only your participants but also your organizations.

Today, I’m handing things over to my colleague and friend Kristin Collins, who leads our Plan Sponsor Experience team in Vanguard Workplace Solutions. Kristin has spent nearly 20 years at Vanguard. She’s one of my key collaborators for improving participant outcomes. Her team not only tracks overall plan performance data but also provides reporting and insights on how participants interact with the experiences built by my organization. This partnership helps us connect the dots between plan design and participant engagement. Together, we’ve met with so many clients who inspire us every day.

I’m excited for you to hear from Kristin about what we’re doing “under the hood” to provide you with the tools, insights, and support you need to deliver even better outcomes for your participants and companies.

Thanks so much, Dina! I’m eager to share how we’re investing in emerging technologies to help you, the plan sponsors, support your participants’ financial wellness and your organizational goals.

When I speak with plan sponsors, I see the balance you aim to strike: driving operational efficiency while helping your employees prepare for retirement. Across plan sizes, we know that plan sponsors are focused on managing plan costs efficiently while improving participant engagement through increased enrollment, participation, and deferral rates.¹ At the same time, you must navigate regulatory requirements and ensure your benefits remain competitive to help attract and retain the talent your organization depends on.

Your leadership in optimizing your organizations’ retirement plans truly shapes your businesses and employees’ retirement outcomes. And we believe technology should support that mission by making your life easier, not more complicated.

That’s why our enhancements to the plan sponsor experience focus on two key areas: removing administrative burden from your already full plates and providing insights that help guide important decision-making for your plans.

This year, we’ve delivered new functionality that supports those areas, including features like delegated browsing, modernized plan administration, and, most recently, our new Plan Health reporting. These enhancements are designed to streamline your workflows, improve visibility, and unlock new opportunities for you to increase your plans’ impact using data to make informed decisions.

Making Plan Health smarter and simpler

Developed with feedback from plan sponsors like you, the new Plan Health feature in My Plan Manager™ introduces enhancements that simplify decision-making and give you practical insights.

Plan Health reporting provides:

Prominent benchmarking
Compare your plan to others in your industry and identify strengths and areas for improvement.

Improved data visualizations
Quickly spot trends and insights to help you make decisions more quickly.

Instant loan activity information
Review detailed information on loan usage, including breakdowns by type and transaction history.

Enhanced investment insights
Understand how your participants are investing with a comprehensive view of asset class and fund balance data and participant allocation details.

Performance that delivers reports 6x faster²
Spend less time waiting for plan analytics.

Our plan sponsors often share that they’re knee-deep in data. With Plan Health, it’s now easier than ever for you to report on plan effectiveness and provide the kind of clarity your committees value.

With these updates, you can stay on top of plan performance, identify new opportunities, and make confident decisions that benefit your organizations and your participants.

This is only the beginning. We’re using advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) to unlock even greater possibilities for delivering smarter insights more quickly, right when you need them.

From plan analytics to plan intelligence

As expectations rise for faster, more intuitive plan reporting and decision-making, we’re using AI to build tools that meet the moment—and expect what’s next. One new tool in development is something we call PlanIQ, an AI-powered experience that will enable you to interact with your data on your terms.

So how will it work?

Note: For illustrative purposes only.

PlanIQ will be integrated into My Plan Manager and allow you to ask questions in plain language using conversational prompts. There’s no need to know the specific report names or navigate dashboards. Just ask.

For example, you might ask, “How effective are my employees at saving in my plan compared with similar plans?”

PlanIQ will search your specific plan’s data and documents and then quickly deliver relevant answers. It will also recommend actions that may help optimize the plan and increase participant engagement.

Building on those insights, PlanIQ will deliver clear, compelling visuals to showcase the plan’s impact. You can then use these visuals in your presentations, whether to leadership or in committee meetings.

It’s not just a tool: It’s a breakthrough in how you can manage your plans with confidence. The AI powering PlanIQ will help turn complexity into clarity and data into decisions.

Why it matters

We’re building these innovations to drive impact, not simply showcase technology.

Our goal is simple: We want to make plan administration easier and more intuitive for you. By giving you clearer, actionable insights—through enhanced analysis and reporting tools—we’re helping you build plans that deliver tangible results for your participants and your organizations.

From Plan Health to PlanIQ, we’re reimagining what’s possible for plan sponsors.

We invite you to collaborate with us as we refine these experiences. Please share your feedback and stories. Your insights help us shape the future of retirement technology and deliver meaningful outcomes.

We want to hear from you as we innovate.

Already a client? Contact your Vanguard representative today. New to Vanguard but interested? Let us know how we can reach you.

Let’s get in touch