Voya financial - Why would anyone use them?

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Cyanide123
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Voya financial - Why would anyone use them?

Post by Cyanide123 »

I went through my wife's retirement account today. The place she works at had that account with Voya. I was utterly shocked at the high fees!!!

The cheapest large cap index fund has a 0.41 fee. Most funds were all active with fee between 0.8-1.2

Compared to vanguard, Schwab, and Fidelity, every fund was so pricey!!!

Unfortunately we're stuck with them until this job ends. But why in this world is the state of Ohio using such an expensive asset manager for the state retirement/pension plan.

[edited title to remove capital letters - moderator prudent]
ohai
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by ohai »

Probably because the plan worked out this relationship 30+ years ago and no one bothered to change it.
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southerndoc
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by southerndoc »

ohai wrote: Mon May 06, 2019 11:09 pm Probably because the plan worked out this relationship 30+ years ago and no one bothered to change it.
Or it's cheaper to the company to have the employees pay for the retirement plan instead of the company.
Prahasaurus
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by Prahasaurus »

I have term life insurance through Voya. It was an ING Group policy, bought when I was much younger and in great shape (thin, exercising daily, etc.). I got a fantastic deal at the time, although fortunately my family hasn't benefitted (yet) from that policy, and I hope they never have to... :-)

The customer service is not the best, the website is terrible. But whatever. Should I die before I'm 66, my family should be in good shape.
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jbranx
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by jbranx »

Probably the result, as someone said, of a longstanding agreement. Here's the Wikipedia history note:
Voya Financial is an American financial, retirement, investment and insurance company based in New York, New York. Voya began as ING U.S., the United States operating subsidiary of ING Group, which was spun off in 2013 and established independent financial backing through an initial public offering.[3] In April 2014, the company rebranded itself as Voya Financial.[4] Voya's predecessors had first entered the U.S. market in the 1970s.
Somewhere along the line Voya acquired the old Lexington Corporate Leaders Fund that owned all the Dow stocks and has kept them through all the spinoffs. Think they raised the mgt. fee. Bit of history here: https://www.businessinsider.com/voya-co ... cks-2015-3
ohai
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by ohai »

southerndoc wrote: Mon May 06, 2019 11:14 pm
ohai wrote: Mon May 06, 2019 11:09 pm Probably because the plan worked out this relationship 30+ years ago and no one bothered to change it.
Or it's cheaper to the company to have the employees pay for the retirement plan instead of the company.
The employer gains nothing from these fees. Voya has made some arrangement to distribute its funds to the employees as retirement investment options. Vanguard or Fidelity would be happy to take over this business and offer funds with much lower fees.

It would be different if the employer itself was a financial institution and therefore, created captive business from its employees. So, we could then just accuse the company of being greedy. In this case, since the fund provider is an external party, there does not seem to be an obvious reason for the employer to keep this arrangement.
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southerndoc
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by southerndoc »

I don't think I was clear.

I'm saying Voya is making money off the funds and in doing so charges less to the employer to administer the retirement accounts. If the funds were low cost, then the employer may have to pay higher administrative fees.
BlueCable
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by BlueCable »

I once had a 401k where the index funds were all over 0.80%. By asking pointed questions, I learned that the employee paid nothing out of his pocket and employees paid all fees, including find expenses, record keeping expenses, financial advisor expenses, and a separate fee to a fiduciary.

The funds themselves were a small portion of the expenses.
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by under_tha_radar »

This post has been deleted :sharebeer
Freefun
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by Freefun »

My employer uses Voya. Expenses range from .01% to .04% depending on the fund.
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by xavierr »

If your wife's retirement plan is not designed to be in the best interest of the employees, she can lobby for a better plan. That's the only way to make things change.

Many threads/articles give suggestions on how to do that:
https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/How_to_ ... 01(k)_plan
https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-lob ... 1424459507
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F150HD
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by F150HD »

Voya, formerly part of ING, correct?

The 'orange money' thing is so confusing, I don't understand what it means and the commercials are strange (and not even funny)

My past experience w/ Voya was many of the funds offered (workplace plan) had no ticker symbols so you couldn't look up information on them. It was very odd.....maybe they were some obtuse share class (?) but still.....anyway, moved $$ out quite a ways back, happy ever since.
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jyoung
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by jyoung »

Voya is the custodian for my employer's plan, but they are CIT funds with ridiculously low ERs and my employer picks up all the admin cost. This is probably a different situation from the OP's, but employer choices can make a big impact.
walkindude
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by walkindude »

Yes, high fees, no ticker symbols - good old Voya! After a few years of that and showing my wife what Voya was doing vs Vanguard, I convinced her to put all her $ in the Fixed Plus II account she has, which pays a fixed 3%, nearly guaranteed. She's had it in that a few years now and I count it as a portion of our fixed income. No extra fees - it pays 3% a year as advertised. May be good to look for it. Good luck!
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by RickBoglehead »

Voya runs some/all of the State of Michigan plans for public employees. They have my wife's 457 and 401k. Management fees is 10.25 per quarter for both plans added together, regardless of balances. My wife has under $14,000 in both, so she's paying a hair under 0.3% management fee. The SSgA S&P 500 Index is .03%, so a total of 0.33%. Not awful, not great.

When she retires in just over 2 years and the last contribution has been made, we'll be rolling these over ASAP.

Voya used to be ING. ING's US banking division was required to be divested and was bought by Capital One. Remaining ING renamed Voya. Kept the Orange...
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Mike Scott
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by Mike Scott »

My daughter has Voya in her small company 401K and I'm guessing all the fees are paid by the employee and they are doing it this way because it is easiest for the employer. The auto enroll fund was a target date fund with a 1.1% fee. The "best" option was a different target date fund at 0.6%. She does get a 7.5% salary match on a 10% contribution but it hurts to see that much lost to fees. Any more than that goes into an IRA.
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by z3r0c00l »

We are part of a very large regional consortium of institutions that pool together for retirement and other benefits. They use Voya, I would guess, out of sheer inertia and lack of knowledge/interest. It is whatever company they had 30 year ago that was purchased by State Street Global Advisors, under ING, which became or was purchased by Voya, or something like that. One morning you wake up and "Acme Financial is now Voya 2 and 20 Holdings, LLC, a subsidiary of Dowe Cheatem and Howe." I fully expect in 10 years it will be something else. The fees for us appear to be low, although it is very difficult to get a straight answer as to the total fees. Not super worried about it as a result.
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finfire
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by finfire »

I think the choices of funds depends on the particular plan?

My company moved to Voya. Didn't have a choice but they do offer Vanguard. Here are the available vanguard choices in my 401K and ERs:

Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund - Admiral .05
Vanguard 500 Index Fund - Admiral .04
Vanguard Mid-Cap Index Fund - Admiral .05
Vanguard Small-Cap Index Fund - Admiral .05
Vanguard Developed Markets Index Fund - Admiral .07
Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund - Admiral .14
SDLinguist
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by SDLinguist »

As others have said, Voya is just the custodian.

My wife works for a financial firm and their plan is through Voya. The only options they have are her company's own funds but with a 0% ER and the company paying all other admin costs as well so essentially free.

It's all up to what the employer chooses.
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by sjt »

DW works for a public school and they have 403(b) and 457 through Voya, and a 401(k) option through Prudential. We only fund the 401(k).

However if down the road we consider early retirement, we might load up the 457 in the years leading up to retiring and only pay a few years worth of their high fees.
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dbr
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by dbr »

Cyanide123 wrote: Mon May 06, 2019 11:01 pm But why in this world is the state of Ohio using such an expensive asset manager for the state retirement/pension plan.
I suppose because they are incompetent and irresponsible. It is unlikely that there is some objective and defensible reason they have to do this.

I would take action by communicating with my state representative and state senator. You could also direct an inquiry to the governor's office. The background homework would be to document the costs of state employee retirement investment plans in other states. You can also refer to the Federal Government TSP plan for comparison.

I am surprised such a thing still exists these days.

Maybe someone else has an explanation that makes sense.
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by jrbdmb »

Cyanide123 wrote: Mon May 06, 2019 11:01 pm I went through my wife's retirement account today. The place she works at had that account with Voya. I was utterly shocked at the high fees!!!

The cheapest large cap index fund has a 0.41 fee. Most funds were all active with fee between 0.8-1.2

Compared to vanguard, Schwab, and Fidelity, every fund was so pricey!!!

Unfortunately we're stuck with them until this job ends. But why in this world is the state of Ohio using such an expensive asset manager for the state retirement/pension plan.
It entirely depends on the what was set up by the employer. My previous employer used Voya, and our 401K had a mix of reasonable Vanguard funds and not-so-reasonable funds from other companies. Voya and your wife's employer could add Vanguard options to her plan if they wanted to.
dbr
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by dbr »

Can you be more specific regarding what plan this is? OPERS seems to offer low cost options, so this must be something else: https://www.opers.org/members/plan-select/index.shtml
edgeway
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by edgeway »

My wife's local government employer uses Voya and they offer some fantastic index funds with very low fees. They also offer access to TRP Cap Appreciation (a pretty fantastic actively managed fund on par with Wellington). But like others have already pointed out here, Voya isn't to blame or to be given credit for the funds offered.
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Cyanide123
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by Cyanide123 »

finfire wrote: Tue May 07, 2019 7:35 am I think the choices of funds depends on the particular plan?

My company moved to Voya. Didn't have a choice but they do offer Vanguard. Here are the available vanguard choices in my 401K and ERs:

Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund - Admiral .05
Vanguard 500 Index Fund - Admiral .04
Vanguard Mid-Cap Index Fund - Admiral .05
Vanguard Small-Cap Index Fund - Admiral .05
Vanguard Developed Markets Index Fund - Admiral .07
Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund - Admiral .14
Definitely did not have any vanguard option available. At least they had Russell large, medium, and small index funds that were available.
Last edited by Cyanide123 on Tue May 07, 2019 10:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Cyanide123
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by Cyanide123 »

dbr wrote: Tue May 07, 2019 9:05 am Can you be more specific regarding what plan this is? OPERS seems to offer low cost options, so this must be something else: https://www.opers.org/members/plan-select/index.shtml
It's the ARP (alternate retirement plan). Opers only made sense if staying in Ohio for a long period of time. I'll look through the options again, but it's not that many options I saw.
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fortfun
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by fortfun »

Cyanide123 wrote: Mon May 06, 2019 11:01 pm I went through my wife's retirement account today. The place she works at had that account with Voya. I was utterly shocked at the high fees!!!

The cheapest large cap index fund has a 0.41 fee. Most funds were all active with fee between 0.8-1.2

Compared to vanguard, Schwab, and Fidelity, every fund was so pricey!!!

Unfortunately we're stuck with them until this job ends. But why in this world is the state of Ohio using such an expensive asset manager for the state retirement/pension plan.
My district uses VOYA to manage our 401k (it is actually another division of the state's pension/indirectly managed through the state pension). We have some low fee options (.08 large us cap, .1 TDF, etc.) However, I believe all of the funds were created by our state's pension. Maybe Ohio should do the same?
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by cavman22 »

MY employer has Voya. I believe most of my funds ER is .04. I like them so far, I prefer the website much over vanguards
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by bradshaw1965 »

My company uses Voya and has access to a nice array of Vanguard funds but has a 1% wrap fee for administration. I've dealt with this before and the only way out is to lobby your HR or administrators. Fidelity has a decent small business fund with $100 administrative costs that will pay itself in 6 months of max 401k contributions compared to that 1% fee.
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by sergeant »

DW's 457b is with Voya and has low-cost Vanguard funds. Website is solid. Stable Value fund is decent. I have no complaints.
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Wakefield1
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by Wakefield1 »

F150HD wrote: Tue May 07, 2019 6:13 am Voya, formerly part of ING, correct?

The 'orange money' thing is so confusing, I don't understand what it means and the commercials are strange (and not even funny)

My past experience w/ Voya was many of the funds offered (workplace plan) had no ticker symbols so you couldn't look up information on them. It was very odd.....maybe they were some obtuse share class (?) but still.....anyway, moved $$ out quite a ways back, happy ever since.
I believe the "Orange Money" assumes annuitization of plan assets when calculating its retired income projection
perhaps Voya costs are negotiated with each employer plan and are less expensive for larger accounts
anonenigma
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by anonenigma »

My former employer began to use Voya after TIAA decided not to bid for renewal. It didn't much matter, as the investment choices were made by a committee which got rid of all high price funds and revenue sharing. The vendor had to accept those choices (both TIAA and Voya did) and just come up with a participant charge - there are costs to operate employer plans. Voya bid low, perhaps believing that they'd be up at TIAA, and came in at 25 bp. As the size of the plan increased, it went down to 24 bp.

Everything depends on whether the employer cares to offer a low cost plan.
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by Miguelito »

While with my last employer (large company, as in tens of thousands of employees), over the years we had 3 financial institutions handle our 401k. Voya (formerly ING) was the 2nd to handle our 401k. The fund selection and fees never changed despite who was handling the 401k.

I didn't love VOYA's tools, user interface, etc. But the fees didn't change, so it was not an issue.
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by GuyInFL »

cavman22 wrote: Tue May 07, 2019 12:21 pm MY employer has Voya. I believe most of my funds ER is .04. I like them so far, I prefer the website much over vanguards
Mine too.
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by walkindude »

SDLinguist wrote: Tue May 07, 2019 7:44 am As others have said, Voya is just the custodian.

My wife works for a financial firm and their plan is through Voya. The only options they have are her company's own funds but with a 0% ER and the company paying all other admin costs as well so essentially free.

It's all up to what the employer chooses.
+1 - sadly most of the public school system 403b plans (at least that I've seen) pass outrageous costs/ERs on to the employees/teachers. Beware.
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by Cheyenne »

Prahasaurus wrote: Mon May 06, 2019 11:23 pm I have term life insurance through Voya. It was an ING Group policy, bought when I was much younger and in great shape (thin, exercising daily, etc.). I got a fantastic deal at the time, although fortunately my family hasn't benefitted (yet) from that policy, and I hope they never have to... :-)

The customer service is not the best, the website is terrible. But whatever. Should I die before I'm 66, my family should be in good shape.
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by Vanguard Fan 1367 »

I wonder the same thing about people who pay 1 percent assets under management fees, 1 percent expense ratio on their mutual funds plus a 3 to 5 percent load to get in. But a number of my friends do this and they aren't too excited about doing my recommendation to change to Vanguard.
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dbr
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by dbr »

The answer to the OPs question has to do with the Ohio Alternative Retirement Plan (ARP) and why that plan allows the high fees. The standard Ohio public employee retirement plan OPERS is a low fee plan. The origin of the problem is with the employer as previously also mentioned by @walkindude.

It is hard to understand why a portion of such a large state plan would be so different in a bad way.

The OP has explained there can be reasons to have to choose that plan over a better alternative. I have the impression it might be a vesting issue for someone who expects to be moving after a year or two. It could be a plan that allows immediate vesting has not been able to negotiate as low costs as one where employees don't vest for a few years. A plan might collect money abandoned by unvested employees. I think the Federal Government TSP benefits from some abandoned funds. This could all be guesswork, but for sure the issue is to understand that particular system in Ohio.
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Re: Voya financial - Why would anyone use them?

Post by TBillT »

By the time we retired, both my spouse and I had Voya managing our 401ks.
My plan was very low cost, and did not change when Voya took it over from whoever had it before.
So it has to do with employer design of the plan. Smaller cos. may be more exposed to doing what Voya wants to do.
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Re: Voya financial - WHY WOULD ANYONE USE THEM?

Post by bh7785 »

Mike Scott wrote: Tue May 07, 2019 6:53 am My daughter has Voya in her small company 401K and I'm guessing all the fees are paid by the employee and they are doing it this way because it is easiest for the employer. The auto enroll fund was a target date fund with a 1.1% fee. The "best" option was a different target date fund at 0.6%. She does get a 7.5% salary match on a 10% contribution but it hurts to see that much lost to fees. Any more than that goes into an IRA.
Our company goes through Principal, and our cheapest fund is an s&p 500 index fund with a 0.7% ER. And we only get 1.5% company match. Feels bad man. Better than no 401k though.
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munemaker
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Re: Voya financial - Why would anyone use them?

Post by munemaker »

Cyanide123 wrote: Mon May 06, 2019 11:01 pm Compared to vanguard, Schwab, and Fidelity, every fund was so pricey!!!
You can't really compare an employer plan to funds you buy as an individual. There are a lot of extra costs forced on to an employer retirement plan, such as extra record keeping, reporting and external audit. Sometimes the employer will subsidize these costs, sometimes not. A lot of people do not realize this.
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