Voya 401(K) Review [2024] (2024)

Voya 401(K) account review: fees, retirement plan rates, investment options, mutual funds selection, pros, and cons.

Voya 401k Plan

The Voya 401k retirement presents users a variety of savings options for the future. Voya allows users to build their portfolios from a diverse set of funds. The user interface is very clean and intuitive, and the Education and Tools center provides the user with good resources for managing his money, making the Voya 401k plan an excellent retirement account.

Retirement Account Overview

When a user first logs into his account, he sees a summary of his estimated retirement income, which shows the user whether or not he is saving enough for retirement.

Investment Options

Voya provides users with a good variety of investment options from which to choose. The basic funds available include bond funds, stable value funds, index funds, small and large cap options, and foreign investment choices. Perhaps the best funds to choose from are the Voya LifePath Retirement Funds, which are made up of a blend of the other options, but the diversity of the funds depends on a user’s age. For example, an individual near retirement age may put his money in the LifePath 2024 fund, which is geared towards individuals retiring in 2024 and thus has a conservative approach. An individual just starting her career may elect to put her money in the 2065 fund, which will be more aggressive in the early years, but will automatically adjust to be more conservative as she gets closer to retirement age.

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Plan Information

Employers have options when configuring a Voya 401k plan, so each employer may have a slightly different plan to offer. Fees for transactions may vary by individual employers, but the tool is set up to offer flexibility to develop a plan that is right for the employer. Some of the options available to plan participants include becoming fully vested in the employer’s plan, withdrawing money from your account for qualified options such as purchasing a home, or participating in the Self-Directed Brokerage Account Option. While the plan offers several core funds to choose from, the Self-Directed Brokerage Account Option allows individuals to access over 13,000 mutual funds, which allows the user to fully customize his portfolio. Fees for transactions under the Self-Directed Account Option may vary.

Education and Tools

The Education and Tools sections offers a wealth of information on basic and advanced investing, tax planning, estate planning, and family financial planning. A separate section on retirement planning allows users to figure out how much income he will need in retirement, how much he should be saving today, and how much diversification he should have in his investments.

In addition to calculators, the education section explains all of the choices available to a user. Voya provides a variety of helpful charts, like the one below that shows the differences in returns on different classes of assets, such as small stocks, large stocks, Government bonds, and Treasury Bills. In the event that the education center does not provide enough information, Voya Financial Advisors are available to answer investment questions, though a fee may be charged for their services.

User Interface

When users don’t log into websites very often, it can be frustrating to navigate a website with a poor layout. Fortunately, the Voya user interface is very easy to use. It is divided into several sections for the user’s Account (balances, histories, etc.), Investments (current portfolio), Plan Information, Personal Information, Messages, and Education and Tools. Each of the sections has sub-sections that are fairly intuitive to navigate.

Password Requirements

While the Voya 401k plan offers some great funds and an intuitive user interface with plenty of bells and whistles, it should be noted that the password requirements for the Voya 401k plan are strangely lacking in security from what you might expect from an investment company holding hundreds of thousands of dollars. The password requirements screenshot below was taken from the Voya “password change” webpage from one employer’s 401k plan. Note that the password requirement only allows users to submit a 6 digit numeric “password.” This means that an attacker would randomly guess your password one out of every one million guesses. The website does then require you to answer two security questions, but users may find it odd that the website doesn’t have stricter requirements.

Voya 401(K) Review Conclusion

Overall, the Voya 401k plan offers users a good variety of funds from which to build their portfolio. The website is very user friendly, allowing customers to see historical information on fund performance, view portfolio performance across different time periods, and plan for retirements using several calculators. However, Voya's competitors - Charles Schwab and Webull - offer better value for investors.

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