Case Study: John Hancock reduces administrative time by 45% and cuts costs with Merrill Corporation's Merrill Connect

John Hancock Boosts Retirement Planning with Merrill Connect

John Hancock, a leading provider of retirement plans, needed a reliable way for its network of Retirement Plan Advisors to create detailed, time-sensitive, personalized proposals. Their previous vendor couldn’t handle the daily volume of customized orders, forcing field offices to manually assemble materials and risking missed compliance timelines. John Hancock required an easy-to-administer ordering portal that supported variable products and formats, uploaded custom files, and ensured on-time, compliant delivery.

Merrill implemented a Merrill Connect front-end portal that lets advisors select proposal types, recipients, upload custom documents, and assemble up to 60 predefined pieces with on-the-fly edits and mandatory compliance content. The system added filtering by advisor and cost center for traceability and invoicing. Results included a >45% reduction in advisor administrative time, and material cost reductions—receiving down 37%, warehousing down 30%, destruction down 35%—while Merrill maintained a 99.99% SLA for same-day turn on orders received by the cutoff.

John Hancock

Robyn Fatter

Retirement Services