It never rains, but it pours. After last week, with its deluge of new advice alliances, one would think that there could not possibly be any more on the horizon. Well, MetLife has chosen to ally with Standard & Poor's while KeyCorp has tapped Financial Engines.

MetLife will be offering its participants online advice through S&P.

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MetLife

S&P

Financial Engines

KeyCorp

On InvestmentWires

Advice Firms Increase Alliance Pace Jan 26 2000

Financial Engines Scores Big Time Dec 16 1999

New Head of Retirement at MetLife Dec 6 1999

The service will be provided through sites that MetLife customizes for its clients. Participants will have the ability to act on the advice recommendations they receive.

Ron Hurt, vice president of retirement services at MetLife, explained to the 401kWire.com his firm's motivations for selecting S&P:

• "The value of the S&P name. They are a very, very credible firm."
• "A part of our arrangement is to hook into S&P's daily market commentary and analysis. We can provide participants with objective comprehensive market information. This was a plus for us."
• "Another plus was S&P's willingness to link their system with our recordkeeping system. Participants can transact on that advice seamlessly. We wanted to make that process as easy as possible."
• "They offered us very competitive pricing."

S&P will have direct responsibility for communicating the particulars of the service to MetLife's plan sponsors. MetLife has $86.6 billion in plan assets and 2.7 participants in its system.

In other advice news, Financial Engines has entered an alliance with KeyBank. Participants will have access to Financial Engines' full array of 401(k) and other advice services. The Ohio bank has $80 billion in plan assets and 325,000 participants under its umbrella.

Financial Engines has also signed on some two new plan sponsor clients as well. These are Borders Group (BGP) and Fort James (FJ). Borders of Ann Arbor, Michigan has 5,600 participants and $83 million in assets, according to The Money Market Directory, 2000. Fort James of Deerfield, Illinois (a Fortune 500 company) has close to $1.5 billion in assets and over 20,000 participants, according to the directory. 

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