Last fall, My College Corner had the opportunity to attend three conferences focused on saving and paying for college.
The final stop was Paul Curley’s ISS Market Intelligence 529 Conference, which annually brings together a Who’s Who of industry thought leaders. We thought it appropriate to ring in the first weeks of the second quarter of the 21st century with an emphasis on the future of 529 education savings plans.
Thank you to these thought leaders for sharing their contributions and insight into 529 innovations:
- Callum Bedos – Founder and CEO, Backpack, seeks to make technology improvements to streamline the user experience for families and universities by automating manual payment operations.
- Wayne Weber – Founder and CEO of Gift of College, identifies opportunities to continue innovating to make gifting to 529 plans easily accessible at places top of mind: at work, in stores, etc.
- Tricia Scarlata – Head of Education Savings for J.P. Morgan Asset Management, points out that some ”innovation” is hidden in plain sight with campaigns such as Mission Tuition for her colleagues who have just become parents.
- Ed Kaminski – Corporate Vice President at New York Life, discusses how they have recently brought a well-established retirement investment option, Stable Value, to more than 40 state 529 Savings Plans.
- Paul Curley – Conference Host, closes with a quick recap of recent 529 innovations to make 529 Plans more accessible to all education savers.
The common theme? Some innovation lies in plain sight – products used in other areas; various process improvements; and a focus on marketing/positioning to make 529 Plans easily accessible to consumers where they are and when they want to save.
Watch the full range of interviews here:
John Hupalo, My College Corner: I just boarded the flight to go to Orlando for a conference. It’s fondly known as the Curly Conference. It probably has some other name, but everyone calls it the Paul Curley Conference. You know, the other two conferences (this fall), I was able to find practitioners, people helping families plan, save for college, meaning programs, 529 programs, student loans. This time I’m going to try to find some innovators. Those who are helping the program managers and others find better ways. New companies, new ideas.
Callum Bedos has founded a great company called Backpack. Callum, tell us about what the problem is and a solution your company is implementing.
Callum Bedos: We were looking at 529s and we saw all the great legislation updates that expanded what 529s could be used for and the usefulness, and how many people were using it, but were kind of left behind on the infrastructure piece and left the stakeholders using 529s a little bit out in the woods, both at universities and student families.
So what we do is we pair advancements in payments technology and software to basically centralize and make everything really nice and easy to use. On the university side, we help centralize all the 529 payments, make it a much more online process, less manual. On the student family side, what we’re trying to build is a tool that helps them use 529s for both tuition and non-tuition payments online. On the non-tuition side, we’re really excited about helping people track and categorize and basically make a determination on eligibility for all the 529 expenses.
JH: I found another great innovator in the 529 world. Wayne Weber, Gift of College. Wayne’s been a friend, a long-time colleague. Wayne, you’ve always been at the center of the innovation in this space. What do you see coming forward? What do you think the great opportunities are?
Wayne Weber: We have so many opportunities to get Americans on tune for saving for college. I think we have to do a lot of it with innovation. In the past, as you mentioned, we created gift cards. Every American buys gift cards nowadays. That’s the kind of thing 529 plans need to do. Be where Americans are, where we give gifts, where we do our employee benefits. That’s gonna make 529s top of mind. Where we have our rewards, our credit card rewards, our loyalty rewards. Imagine being able to put those in 529 plans. There are so many opportunities. I like to find the coolest things that Americans do that align with 529 plans, and those are just some of them. For the future? Wow, the sky’s the limit. I think there’s tons of organizations and tons of innovations people can do that align with where people are in their life, which might be contributing to theirs, their kids’, or their grandkids’ 529 plans.
JH: And literally where they are. I go to CVS and I find Gift of College cards. That had to be a proud moment for you.
WW: Super proud. CVS is a great place that any American can wander into last minute for a thoughtful gift. And when you align it with gift cards, no offense to gift cards, but it’s (usually for) restaurants, it’s travel. This is something pretty meaningful. And then if you’re online, you can go to Walmart.com. Same thing. Grab a Gift of College gift card available to deposit into any 529 plan right from the biggest retailer on Earth.
JH: Well, here’s another great thought leader just off a panel where she made an unbelievably insightful, brilliant point about innovation right under your nose. Tricia, tell us about what you just told the conference here at Paul Curley’s conference.
Tricia Scarlata: Thank you for the compliments first and foremost. But yes, we talk to advisors every day that (say) actually families are saving. They are earmarking dollars for college, but they’re letting it sit in a checking or a savings account. And so we talk to advisors and say, “Hey, this is not money that you need to go find. It’s actually dollars right there that you just need to put to work and explain to your client the benefits of taking that money out of a cash account and investing in a 529 account. Getting the potential investment returns, and also getting the tax benefits of a 529 account”.
JH: It’s all pretty simple. The other point you made that I thought was equally brilliant, honestly, was the idea of, as a big bank, getting these products in the hands of your employees when they’re going on maternity leave or paternity leave. What a great – and it’s right there – it’s a simple idea, but now you’re doing it.
TS: One of the most favorite things that I’ve done over the years is develop Mission Tuition, which is the program that we have around educating our colleagues to save and invest for college. So when somebody goes out on maternity or paternity leave, when you’re coming back you get this package. You (already) have to change all your health benefits, your beneficiaries. (But) in that package, we also talk about planning for college. These are people that have babies that are four months old. It’s the perfect time to start. We certainly encourage them doing that on their way back to work.
JH: Ed Kaminski, from New York Life, and I are outside for a minute, taking a little break. Ed, you’re at a big life insurance company. Pretty established group. What kind of innovation are you doing to help the 529 industry?
Ed Kaminski: So Stable Value actually is a fairly recent innovation. Not a new investment. It’s been in the defined contribution retirement world for over 40 years. However, it’s relatively new to the 529 marketplace, and there’s different structures. And we’re proud to offer all kinds of products and services to the 529 world. In fact, we offer one service or another Stable Value-related to almost 40% of the states out there. So we’re very proud of that, to help people secure their future, secure their dreams going forward, for sure.
JH: That’s fantastic. Can you just tell us maybe in 10 seconds or less, what is Stable Value? When you say that and someone doesn’t know, what do you mean by that?
EK: So think of capital preservation. Some people may have heard of money markets before, but basically it’s your safe port in the storm. It’s not a mutual fund. It’s part investment product, part insurance product that help with the certain guarantees.
JH: Alright, it’s a great pleasure for me. Here he is, Paul Curley in the flesh. (The) man who created this terrific conference. Paul, we’re trying to focus now on innovation. What do you think are some of the great innovations in the last year or two or three for the 529 college savings business?
Paul Curley: Great question. Thank you for asking. There’s been a number of innovations. Most frankly, the expansion of qualified expenses to a number of different pieces. So look, from a legislative perspective, product just making the ease of use a whole lot easier. Marketing distribution. So across the entire product, there’s been a lot of just ease-of-use and more and more families are using 529 plans, which is great to see.
JH: Paul, thanks so much. And truly this is (the) end of the year conference. Everyone looks forward to it. It’s great to be here with you again. Thanks for doing this.
PC: Thank you.