The best in online retirement planning - Fidelity or Schwab?

Fidelity Investments, a group of private companies in the financial services industry, comprises a large family of mutual funds, their distributors and investment advisors, a retail brokerage, as well as some other unrelated businesses. Fidelity Investments constitutes two independent yet cooperating companies, Fidelity Management and Research Corporation and Fidelity International Limited (FIL) which provides investment products and services to clients outside the Americas.

Fidelity's Total Retirement Solution provides an extensive array of retirement investment planning and management solutions. In addition, it assimilates a broad range of product offering comprising of Fidelity-only and multi-manager funds, along with professional and personalized investor education and investment guidance. Fidelity delivers investment and management solution through convenient, user friendly, one stop access via telephone and the web.

One of the world's largest fund management organizations, Fidelity provides a wide range of over 100 pension and retail funds for all prominent asset classes and regions, managed by Fidelity and third party managers. Consumers can choose to contribute to both a 401(k) and an IRA and even receive commission-free trades in their IRA when they move a former employer's 401(k) or other retirement savings to Fidelity. Fidelity's Retirement Income Planner assists in calculating retirement income and expenses and in planning investment strategies. This offer is applicable for Rollover IRA, Traditional IRA, Inherited IRA, Roth IRA, and SEP-IRA accounts. Fidelity's Retirement Income Advantage supports investors to plan, monitor as well as manage their financial situation throughout retirement. The Income Advantage program offers guidance tools for individual investors which they can use with the help of a Fidelity representative.

The Charles Schwab Corporation, one of the world's largest discount brokers, provides the brokerage services with significantly lower commissions and fees. Clients can access its services via telephone, wireless device, and the Internet. In addition, the firm provides an exclusive range of investment research, mutual funds, annuities, bond trading, and checking and mortgages through its Charles Schwab Bank. IRAs from Charles Schwab discount brokers basically consists of individual retirement accounts and college savings plans. The Company's bundled 401(k) retirement plan product provides plan sponsors several investment options, participant education and servicing, trustee services, and participant-level recordkeeping.

Through the Schwab Personal Choice Retirement Account (PCRA), employees can choose from numerous investment options, including stocks, bonds, mutual funds and more. Some of its other major services are participant call center and a PCRA support team for plan sponsors and participant education and communications. Schwab has lifted the account service fees on retail contribution plans for small business owners and the self-employed. The move, is applicable for several retirement programs, including Individual 401(k) plans, 403(b)(7) plans, Qualified Retirement Plans, Keogh plans, SEP-IRAs and Simple IRAs. Schwab Retirement Advisor Services enables TPAs to integrate both commissionable and non-commissionable mutual funds within the same plan, which helps retirement advisors to tailor their fee-collection and payment methods to meet the requirements of the plans they serve.

Nayanathara. S.

Hi-Tech Editorial Division