NRECA 401(k) Pension Plan Enhancements: Leveraging the Scale of Voya Financial

NRECA recognizes the importance of maintaining financially strong, flexible and cost competitive employee benefit programs that position your cooperative for success and as an employer of choice in your community. As the employee benefits industry continues to evolve, especially as a result of consolidation and increased regulatory complexity, along with a variety of other challenges, it’s now more important than ever for plan sponsors and administrators to leverage the best resources and greatest operational scale to ensure the continued competitiveness and long-term affordability of the benefit plans designed exclusively for America’s electric cooperatives.

Strategic relationship with Voya Financial
As announced during the 2025 Interact Conference this summer, NRECA has entered into a strategic business relationship with Voya Financial, an organization that is among the top five providers of retirement plan services in the country. With the company’s 10,000 employees and over 9 million retirement accounts managed, partnering with Voya provides the NRECA 401(k) Pension Plan with access to scale, resources and technology that will benefit our plan and its participants for years to come.

Changes to back-end systems; co-op services continue to be provided by NRECA
It is important to note that NRECA is not exiting the 401(k) administration business in this new relationship with Voya; NRECA retains sponsorship of the 401(k) Plan along with the primary fiduciary duty governing the administration of the plan and investment of plan assets. Voya’s primary role will be to host and maintain the recordkeeping systems that NRECA will use to support those administrative services and to provide our plan participants and benefits administrators with access to an array of tools and transactional capabilities that is greater than we can offer today.

This type of strategic relationship also allows NRECA and its members to benefit from accelerated innovation and access to enhanced digital resources, all while making the administration process easier for co-op benefit administrators and the NRECA staff supporting them. As such, this relationship is also expected to help contain future administrative cost pressures related to, among other things, adoption of emerging technologies and the management of risks inherent in the benefits administration business.

Finally, this service delivery strategy is modeled after the very successful strategic relationship NRECA established with UnitedHealthcare/UMR in support of the NRECA Medical Plan in 2013. NRECA has been evaluating this option for some time, but were not willing to move forward until we found a vendor that offered us capabilities and flexibilities like the ones found with Voya Financial.

Timing of these changes and their benefits
Our current project plan anticipates that Voya will begin providing the back-end recordkeeping and technology services that support the administration of the 401(k) Plan in the later part of 2026. That’s when we expect to unveil an enhanced digital experience for 401(k) Plan participants and benefit administrators that will continue to be accessed through cooperative.com > My Benefits.

Participants and co-op staff will also continue to access information about their plans/accounts by calling the NRECA Member Contact Center using the existing phone line. And, they will continue to benefit from the service and financial education offered by our NRECA field representatives, the Personal Investment & Retirement Consulting (PIRC) team, benefit service representatives and other NRECA support resources.  

Next steps and NRECA’s commitment to you
NRECA’s commitment to participating co-ops in the 401(k) Plan is to ensure a smooth transition by providing transparent and timely communications on the status of this initiative as well as the tools, training and resources to ensure your co-op’s preparedness for this exciting new chapter.

Because NRECA will continue to manage the existing plan investment options, asset management, fiduciary oversight and overall administration of the plan, we anticipate that this transition will have minimal impact to participants and benefit administrators, but we stand ready to provide the comprehensive benefits communication and assistance each member may need to successfully navigate this journey with us.

Questions and resources
If you have any questions now or in the months ahead, please reach out to your dedicated field representative. Benefit administrators now have access to a new page on the NRECA Employee Benefits website that will serve as their primary resource for information and updates regarding this exciting initiative. That new page will feature the high-level project timeline, ongoing communication content and, coming in the year ahead, training tools, resources and communication materials for use with their 401(k) Plan participants.