Wealth on the Rails: How Amtrak's Benefits Leader Is Building Financial Futures for 24,000 Employees - Beyond the Paycheck

Topics in this episode

employee benefits 401k financial wellness retirement planning Auto-enrollment

Episode notes

Summary How do you drive benefits engagement when most of your workforce is union, frontline, and constantly on the move? Robert Fortin, Senior Manager of Benefits Wealth at Amtrak and former pension consultant, shares how his team thinks beyond retirement to help employees build wealth across their careers. From his earliest money lessons (savings bonds from his grandmother) to riding Amtrak routes to hear frontline feedback firsthand, Robert brings a practical, people-first lens to plan design. He explains why automatic programs beat awareness campaigns, what the Pension Protection Act unlocked for savers, and how default choices still shape outcomes years later. Robert also unpacks Amtrak's unique context - balancing federal funding stewardship with attraction and retention, operating under the Railroad Retirement system, and tailoring offerings like lifestyle spending accounts to a diverse, largely union workforce. He closes with what's next: more employee choice - with the caveat that simplicity, vendor partnership, and updated legislation are essential to make it work.