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Good product - good team in place
November 23, 2022

Good product - good team in place

Steven Weigand | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Human Interest

We use the product for non-union employee retirement 401K. The largest problem we had with our old provider was that it required a large amount of time/effort from us to set up meetings, manage the plan's assets, and employee contributions, coordinate with the payroll provider, and generally management of the plan. This transition will simplify the work we put in, especially since we are small and not 401K professionals.
  • New employee set up directly via email and not through our company
  • One point of contact without need for multiple service providers
  • A good online portal and ease of use
  • I was anticipating a stronger coordination in transition. Meaning an easier step by step walk me through the process.
  • I would have expected during the transition someone from Human Interest to say "let's get all your employees together so Human Interest can explain everything" as opposed to letting me do that when I didn't know the detail that would answer employee questions. I answered some questions incorrectly which does not look good.
  • Our time and effort in managing the 401K plan should be considerably reduced.
  • We have now one contact as opposed to three that we had with our old plan which will help me get answers to questions without having to determine who is in charge of what aspect of the plan.
It has been much easier to use then our prior plan's platform, however there are always improvements that can be made. I think if I had been given or provided a training on how to use the system in conjunction with the transition, I would have scored it 10.

Do you think Human Interest delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Human Interest's feature set?

Yes

Did Human Interest live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Human Interest go as expected?

No

Would you buy Human Interest again?

Yes

Our plan had some unusual issues that forced the transition to be less than smooth. However, I would recommend HI to a colleague who was unsatisfied with their current plan/advisors and wanted more of a one-stop shop company that focused on taking the work away from unqualified internal employees. I struggled with managing the old plan I have more confidence in Human Interest and believe they will always focus on making sure we are compliant and on task.

Evaluating Human Interest and Competitors

Yes - We were with John Hancock and Paychex and Merrill Lynch Wealth Managment. It was difficult to coordinate between the three. There was no sense of whom would answer a question if it concerned an employee. We were leaving our payroll provider, so it made no sense to continue with them regarding our retirement. As we are a small company I feel as though we received less attention when we needed more as we did not have the expertise to manage the plan.
  • Price
  • Product Features
  • Product Usability
  • Other
The single most important factor in our decision to switch to Human Interest was the recommendation from a trusted advisor who had worked with them in the past. We would not have even considered looking into HI without that recommendation. The name Human Interest when compared to household brokerage firms like Fidelity or John Hancock is in itself a hurdle to get over.
There would not be much to change as I do not have a staff dedicated to the process. If I did it over again I would try and focus on the process and expectations of the conversion team at Human Interest compared to my own expectations. Had I gotten those expectations out in the beginning I think it would have gone smoother, at least on my end.