BlackRock and Microsoft are partnering to come up with new ways to provide better financial security in retirement, according to Microsoft. It’s proof that larger technology companies are increasingly looking to financial services as a way to broaden their reach, while investment management companies like BlackRock see tech partnerships as key to their future.
For individual investors and advisors, it could mean a new way of planning for retirement. The two firms “aim to make it easier for people to save for retirement and achieve the lifetime income they need through their employers’ workplace savings plan,” Microsoft said in a statement. They’re working to develop a platform that guides financial behavior and allows users to more regularly engage with their retirement assets.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a prepared statement that Microsoft is applying “the power of the cloud and AI” in its collaboration with BlackRock, something the investing industry has already seen in many similar announcements, two of the most notable examples being that of IBM and Salesforce.
For its part, BlackRock will be designing and managing products that “will seek to provide a lifetime of income in retirement and would be made available to U.S. workers through their employers’ workplace savings plan.”
Financial security in retirement “has become one of the most defining societal challenges of our time,” BlackRock CEO Laurence Fink said in a statement. Solving that problem, he said, is a matter of “responsibility” for the firm.
