When we issued our most recent member survey, we received several comments regarding our benefit estimator tool that is available to our members when they sign in to our Secure Member Services portal that we call myMPERS. We would like to share with you now, those comments we received and offer our responses.
Spouse Date of Birth
One member requested that the estimator tool remember the spouse’s date of birth so that a user would not have to keep reentering that date when running multiple estimates. We agree that would be a good change to the system. We have asked our contracted pension system administrator to program that functionality into the system. As with many of our requested system changes, the changes affect many if not all of the system administrator’s clients so they must prioritize any changes. At this time, we do not have a firm commitment from them as to when they will start programming that change. We will provide notice via our website after the programming is complete to let members know that the spouse’s date of birth will remain in place when running multiple estimates.
Comparison Tool
A member suggested that we provide an online comparison tool to help members decide when choosing between the Closed Plan or the Year 2000 Plan and whether or not to select the BackDROP (if applicable) when they retire.
Again, we heartily agree with our member’s comment. The comparison tool has been on our wish list for some time. Our pension system administrator is getting close to rolling out a revamped Secure Member Access (i.e., myMPERS) and the estimator tool is going to be part of the new member access portal. Currently MPERS staff and the system administrator are working on the new process to ensure that what we have currently for our members’ use will remain in place and not be lost in the conversion. There are quite a few moving parts when converting to a new process and we want to get it right before letting members have access to a new system. The estimator tool will be tested thoroughly before providing it to the membership. We do not want to provide any bad advice to our members when they are making that critical retirement decision. Please stay tuned for future updates on the new myMPERS and the estimator tool.
Future or Potential Final Average Salary
Another member suggested that he or she be allowed to put in a future or modified final average pay (FAP) when working with our benefit estimator. While we can certainly see how this may be useful, we cannot oblige this request. The benefit estimate is a very sensitive document for us. We are very cautious when making changes to the benefit estimate process because every retiring member will use one or more estimates to make a very important and irrevocable decision. We would rather have our members call us to request an estimate with a different FAP or salary information if that is needed. Our benefit specialists can manually produce such a request. As a reminder, members can also calculate their own benefit estimate, including their anticipated or modified FAP, by following the formulas on page 29 of our Year 2000 Plan and 2011 Tier Handbook or page 28 of our Closed Plan Handbook.
We appreciate our members completing the survey this summer. We do listen, we consider all of your suggestions, and we will implement the ones that we believe will add value to the entire system. You do not have to wait for surveys to let us know how we are doing; you are always welcome to drop us a line at mpers@mpers.org.