RETIREMENT & BENEFIT PLAN SERVICES

Employee Communications Guide

Drive results with behavior-

driven communications

For Plan Sponsor Use Only. Not for Distribution to Participants.

Your retirement plan’s success and your employees’ retirement success are two sides of the same coin. When your participants win, your company wins.

At Bank of America Merrill Lynch, we understand your unique needs as a plan sponsor, and we understand the equally diverse needs of your employees in seeking to achieve financial wellness.

This guide is designed to help you define your participant communications goals and determine which tools and services can help you achieve those goals.

Even experienced retirement plan participants appreciate learning new ways to potentially grow their nest egg. And with the right information and education, you can encourage all your employees to take full advantage of their benefits.

Our behavior-driven employee communications program is guided by four key principles, which serve to provide a framework for targeting core behaviors that can lead to financial wellness. All communications are designed to educate, create awareness and motivate employees to take action, with personalized information to drive specific behaviors based on life stages, career milestones or corporate events.

Build a Tailored Communications Strategy to Help Employees Get the Most from Their Benefits

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Help Employees Maximize Company Benefits

Making it easy for employees to take full advantage of their retirement plan is the key to helping them make the most of their retirement benefits. Our Maximize Company Benefits materials educate employees about the importance of long-term savings to help achieve financial wellness.

Motivate employees to participate

For many employees, enrollment in their company’s plan represents the first step in the journey toward retirement. Making it easy for employees to get started and take full advantage of the plan is essential to helping them make the most of their retirement benefits.

Our compelling communications encourage employees to join the plan, and our enrollment tools make the process easy. Employees learn the importance of long-term savings, the benefits of starting early, even if starting small, and how to look for opportunities to gradually increase their contributions along the way.

Help participants manage and monitor their accounts

It’s critical that employees have the flexibility to access their accounts in a way that’s most convenient for them. We offer a range of orientation tools to help participants access, manage and monitor their accounts. Virtually 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, employees can check their balances, view current statements, review fund performance and much more simply by logging onto Benefits OnLine®, calling the speech-enabled Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system, or talking to a retirement service representative (weekdays).

Support employees along the way

Employees need reinforcement and support on the journey to retirement success. Our ongoing communication tools repeat key messages, reinforce desired behaviors and respond directly to your employees’ questions. We view each contact as an opportunity to help employees plan effectively in seeking to achieve their financial goals. For example, our participant statements present account information in a manner that helps employees assess their ongoing progress.

Desired Participant Actions

n Contribute as much as possible; increase contributions regularly

n Contribute at least to match levels (for plans offering a match)

n Contribute pre-tax up to 402(g) and catch-up contribution limits

n Align contribution rates with stated retirement income goal

n Plan Highlights

n Account Access Brochure

n Participant Statement

n Roth 401(k) Brochure

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Help Employees Invest Wisely

n Invest Wisely Brochure

n Advice Access Brochure

n Advice Access FAQ Brochure

n Risk Assessment Guide

n Advice Access Projection Statement

Help employees make smart investment decisions

By means of our communications program, we also introduce participants to services that can help them invest appropriately, simplify the decision-making process and help them achieve their unique vision of retirement. For example, we offer an array of communications describing Advice Access, a powerful investment advice service that provides participants recommendations on how much to contribute to the plan and how to allocate their contributions to potentially increase the likelihood of reaching their retirement income goals.1

Your company’s retirement plan may be one of the most important benefits your employees have. Yet the plan can pose a challenge for participants — how do they invest wisely in it to reach their retirement goals? Today, employers are offering more and more investment options. While having more choice provides greater flexibility, it also can leave participants feeling overwhelmed. Our Invest Wisely materials help employees learn basic investing principles, such as asset allocation and diversification, so they can make more informed investment decisions.

Desired Participant Actions

n Diversify among (and within) asset classes

n Rebalance portfolio

n Understand risk tolerance and optimize asset allocation strategy in seeking to achieve goals

n Adjust asset allocation strategy as age and/or financial circumstances change

1 Asset allocation and diversification do not ensure a profit or protect against loss in declining markets.

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n A LifeStage Planning Guide

n Retirement Slide Rule

Desired Participant Actions

n Use investment advice and asset allocation services that help simplify investment selection

n Use online resources and tools to help develop a sound retirement savings and investment strategy that supports a specific income replacement goal

Help employees succeed over the long term

The primary goal of all our communications is to simplify retirement planning. We structure our materials to make goal-setting and account management easier, and arm participants with information they may need to help them realize their goals. Finally, we make every effort to develop interesting and effective programs to encourage employees to take an active part in managing and monitoring their accounts.

In addition to helping employees understand the changing retirement landscape, we can present time-tested strategies for saving and investing. We can identify needs associated with various life stages and communicate targeted solutions and actionable next steps to help employees take responsibility for their future.

Help Employees Set and Monitor Goals

Many employees take the important step of enrolling in the plan, but don’t always actively manage and monitor their accounts on an ongoing basis. From the time of enrollment in a retirement plan through the transition to retirement, it is essential that participants plan accordingly, set realistic retirement income goals and measure their progress periodically. Our Set and Monitor Goals materials are structured to make goal-setting and account management easier, and provide participants with the information they may need as they seek to realize their goals.

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When employees are changing employers or about to retire, they often face involved decisions when it comes to managing their accumulated retirement plan assets and their choices could have long-term financial consequences. Our Maximize Accumulated Benefits materials help employees understand and evaluate their distribution plans, and guide them through the process necessary to make a smooth transition.

Prepare employees for smooth transitions

At Bank of America Merrill Lynch, we know the challenges that downsizing, restructuring and retirement can present. During a period of job transition, employees may find it difficult to deal with all the considerations related to their retirement savings.

We can provide the insights and resources to help employees review their options and decide what to do with their retirement plan assets. Today, retirement represents a new experience and an active lifestyle. For employees to retire on their own terms, it’s important that they exercise control of their finances. We can help pre-retirees prepare with information on retirement income planning, Social Security benefits and more.

Specifically, corporate executives often face complex retirement and savings decisions. As they approach retirement, we can guide them through multi-faceted considerations concerning their interest in various types of employer-sponsored plans. For example, we can make them aware of potential tax implications.

Help Employees Maximize Accumulated Benefits

n Managing Your Career Transition Guide

n Planning for Your Retirement Lifestyle Guide

n Distribution Options Overview

Desired Participant Actions

n Minimize loans and in-service withdrawals

n Preserve and maximize tax-advantaged savings

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A Choice of Media to Engage All Participants

Knowing that individuals learn in different ways, our education program utilizes a multichannel approach to deliver communications in a variety of ways: proactively, on-demand, when an individual engages with us, or through employer-sponsored activities such as benefit fairs or educational seminars.

Print materials

We offer a full range of printed communication materials from posters and brochures to workbooks and questionnaires. These materials can be used for in-person meeting support, to introduce a new product or service, or to reinforce messages delivered by other means.

Electronic communications

Today, many employees enjoy the flexibility of learning when it is most convenient for them. We provide online presentations, webinars and podcasts as well as traditional print communications. Benefits OnLine, our participant website, includes interactive calculators, frequently asked questions and informative articles on a host of topics including retirement planning, investing basics and personal finance. Targeted messages and banners can address your unique plan features as well as specific employee segments.

Workplace presentations

The communications suite includes a wide array of educational seminars designed to help address common plan communication needs such as participation, increasing contributions, diversification, retirement planning and transition events such as layoffs or retirement. All presentations are available “on demand” and can be made available electronically via Benefits OnLine, email or your intranet site.

Targeted messages

Delivering the right retirement message, at the right time, to the right individuals with personalized communications has historically been effective in driving employees to take action toward reaching their retirement savings income goals. We leverage the employee data you provide, such as age, salary, and contribution rates, and create key messages that reach out to your employees in a very distinct and compelling way. Most importantly, our innovative, personalized communications help you target specific segments of your employee population, motivate behavior changes and generate results that are measurable.

Your Bank of America Merrill Lynch representative can help you access participant communications. Existing clients can view electronic copies of sample communications by logging onto www.benefits.ml.com/admin to access the plan sponsor administration site. Click on Communications > Sample Employee Communciations.

The Advice Access service uses a probabilistic approach to determine the likelihood that participants in the service may be able to achieve their stated goals and/or to identify a range of potential wealth outcomes that could be realized. Additionally, the recommendations provided by Advice Access do not consider an individual’s comfort level with investment risk, and may include a higher level of investment risk than a participant may be personally comfortable with. Participants are strongly advised to consider their personal goals, overall risk tolerance, and retirement horizon before accepting any recommendations made by Advice Access. Participants should carefully review the explanation of the methodology used, including key assumptions and limitations, which is provided in the Advice Access disclosure statement. It can be obtained through Benefits OnLine® or through your Bank of America Merrill Lynch representative.

IMPORTANT: The projections or other information shown in the Advice Access service regarding the likelihood of various investment outcomes are hypothetical in nature, do not reflect actual investment results and are not guarantees of future results. Results may vary with each use and over time.

Neither Merrill Lynch nor its financial advisors provide tax, accounting or legal advice. Any statements contained herein were not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used for the purpose of avoiding U.S., federal, state or local tax penalties. Please consult your personal professional advisor as to any tax, accounting or legal statements made herein.

For Plan Sponsor Use Only.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch is a marketing name for the Retirement Services business of Bank of America Corporation (“BAC”). Banking and fiduciary activities are performed by wholly owned banking affiliates of BAC, including Bank of America, N.A., member FDIC. Brokerage services are performed by wholly owned brokerage affiliates of BAC, including Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated (“MLPF&S”), a registered broker-dealer and member SIPC.

Investment products:

Are Not FDIC Insured Are Not Bank Guaranteed May Lose Value

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