Empower® Reviews

by Narddog123

I wish I could go back to voya. Ever since my company changed to this app - I’ve felt so much less empowered managing my 401k.

Empower has always been flawed but now I can’t even login after the last update. 1) Prior to this issues logging in seemed to take a solid 30 seconds after entering credentials - now it won’t log in at all. 2) Having the ability to see a graph / multiple types of bar/line graphs on month over month or year over year progress with different colors for each fund is important but extremely lacking. 3) Also being able to compare on a table available mutual funds to invest in to and history of possible fund performance on a birds eye view for the last 30 days, ytd, 3month, 6month, 1 year, 3, 5, 10 year for a given etf/fund is so crucial but lacking in Empower. 4) having visibility with reinvesting dividends and when the next ex-div dates are happening for my company needs to be present as well (and isn’t but is in other 401k apps like voya). Developers please give Empower some love as its extremely lacking in core features that are present in other competitor apps (like voya etc)

by Gadaboutcatgirl

It is very disappointing that this app has forced us to use Empower if on a mobile device, which is all I’m ever on. Even though my password is correct, when Face ID is used, it says it’s not correct. I then get locked out for trying to login a couple of times. If I’m ever able to get in Empower , it does not have near the features you get by being on the website. After calling and emailing, the only response I received was “oh well, that’s all we can do.” The mailed letter stated that this was the new, better way and that it wasn’t going to be changed. So unfortunate that the company can’t let us decide how we want to view our money and from what device. It’s also unfortunate that they don’t really seem to care what their customers think either, especially after seeing so many poor reviews for Empower .

by Rifleman 45

I put Empower on my phone to help manage my fiancé’s retirement plan here are the pros and cons I’ve found it is very simple and easily navigated and pretty straightforward Easily make changes change your investments increase or decrease contribution amounts only would recommend it To you anyone with an account way easier Then trying to manage your account from their website which need serious work and being more user-friendly go with Empower . Con However not being Able to see who your money is invested with is a major drawback if you press the managed account button it tells you you don’t have authorization but it is your money so who is this authorized person managing the account. con two it doesn’t show you the money that you contribute versus the money your employer contributes. Con three it is incredibly slow to update my fiancé’s has been showing the same amount for a month and finally went up one dollar today when she got paid I would say both their app and their website need a major overhaul.

by Greedy Corp Sh!t

I really liked Empower but i read change logs before upgrading and the most recent upgrade says it will remove the goals feature from Empower because users can simply go to the website to do goals. This makes no sense to me. Why remove working features from an app and gate them behind the website? Now i’m stuck on the current version and won’t upgrade to the new one or future ones because I love apps being able to use touchid to access things and not have to dig up 1 out 60 unique passwords in my password safe to access some web gui. Please consider not removing working features from an otherwise fantastic app that keeps getting better and better up until this point.

by Jnw588

I am sad my retirement company mass mutual sold out to this app. After getting an invitation to their app I quickly noticed that much of my info that I thought would have migrated over is either not there like beneficiary information or the fact they have a 6 year old email address that is not even in use, although they used my correct email address to contact me???? Empower is sad and not what I would have expected for the hype we received. After 30 minutes on hold to just speak with a person I am not impressed. As I am the manger over planned benefits I will be contacting our local broker to determine what other options their are versus this app. Never stay with a company just because they are big. I cannot recommend this app at all at this time.

by Los1memory

Empower is not working. As of today after seeing high review and my app does load any of investment info, it displays as it has always the error msg we are working hard to... and then point me to a dead end the webpage does not load displays another error in red. I have uninstalled and then reinstalled same issue.
This is crap. When will they finish working hard, please stop upgrading Empower , it does not work or load proper info from my investment.
For once provide a full fledged working app. If your excuse is that you do not find proper engineering ressources, then now is the time to hire the right ressources to remedy Empower problems and solving the working hard in vain. There are plenty of qualified engineers out of work, help the economy and help the customers meet they productivity and life on the go by hiring.

by Review576

this app recently stopped letting people use the website and now force you to use their underdeveloped app. Using Empower I can no longer view the daily price of specific investments and also no longer can move a specific dollar amount from one investment to another. I tried emailing this app to see if the features were still there but maybe in a place I wasn’t looking. I think they may use a bot to reply to emails. In spite of several attempts, they kept sending back instructions to do other things that completely missed the mark. I was left thinking they don’t understand how bad Empower is and thus no hope of enhancing it.

by Jfraught23

I cannot get access to my self-directed brokerage account on any of my mobile devices now. This is a huge step backwards. If I’m out in the field and have no access to a computer how am I supposed to access this? I can see my balance but am told to visit the website using a desktop to do trades. Up until a week ago I could trade in the field using my iPad. Called for help but was told I can not trade using mobile devices and will need to use a desktop. Empower for mobile devices does not give access to the self directed account. Please get this fixed ASAP. You also should have notified customers of this issue when you knew of the problem as I spent hours trying to figure out the problem and find a way around it.

In a mobile first world this is a huge step backwards. Please fix this soon guys.

by Saiwing217

I was forced to use Empower on my ipad and iphone since this app has coded a User Agent (UA) detection into their platform. This allows them to see what device or browser I am coming in on. They will deny you entry and force a load Empower page on to you. In essence you cannot access their web page from a mobile device. This would be tolerable if Empower is even 50% of the features and function of their website. This is a dumbed down app. When you want to restack your investments you have only the option to do so by percentage which force you to calculate each percentage in the new target percentages. No other financial organization ie Vanguard, Trowe, etc. would force you to use Empower only from your iPad. We should have the option to choose. Well I choose to NOT use this dumbdowned app. I will go old school and use my PC until they shut that down. Don’t use Empower. Call their customer service and register your complaint.

by SoAnnoyed20

Upon logging in, I am unable to bypass the enrollment screen, even though I have already enrolled to the level I want(1% not the 5% THEY want). Considering that I have already enrolled, I am flabbergasted that I can't do anything with Empower except enroll... hence, it's worthless.

I am enraged that this company constantly pesters me to modify MY enrollment option, and view this as them wanting to increase their fee (tied to a % of assets under management), which completely eradicates any measure of trust that should be present between a client and financial advisor.

Moreover, I feel that they make it too easy to accidentally enroll in a larger contribution, and thus find using their tools risky--not that I can even use it in Empower!(I speak from experience using their website).

FYI, in the event that this company actually listens to customers, the reason that I haven't enrolled in the 5% is that I want to understand (incrementally) the impact on my takehome pay. Thus, showing your customers the math on this would be an excellent start toward fixing this mess of a tool. I have low expectations of an improvement, however, because I expect a big company like this to be a useless dinosaur that only gets business by appealing to low cost targets of companies offering retirement/401k plans. Hence, the real problem is that I'm not your customer, my company is and I'm just an afterthought--much like Empower seems to be!

by JD-Retirement

When I go to the this app site it redirects me to the this app app, which is fine. But once on Empower I cannot access my self-directed Brokerage account (where a majority of my funds are). Empower only shows balances, you can’t make trades, rebalances or look at holdings in your brokerage account.

So Empower doesn’t let me go to the website any more and I can’t access my brokerage investments / make trades from Empower . I’ve lost functionality and it really impairs my portfolio management.

Otherwise Empower is really nice. But not being able to access Self Directed Brokerage Accounts is a big oversight.

by ScottBethesdaMD

Empower is so buggy at login. Sometimes it goes fast to your account and sometimes not at all. The spinning circle spins endlessly. You cannot even use Empower at times. The need to fix the login process. It shouldn’t take 30 seconds for the FaceID to log you in to your account. Now my Prudential Retirement app has become an this app app too, but that app logs in fast as always. But that is just because they are using the previous Prudential app with their name on it. Cannot wait until this app breaks that app.

Now, if Empower does let you into your account, then it works fine and is a decent experience overall. The website is much better though for actual account management processes. There are less usable functions within Empower .

Fix your login please, as this has been an issue for at least 6-12 months now.

by Chelms276

As others have noted, you’re forced to use Empower on a mobile device (tablet or phone). It’s slow, and this app’s goal seems to be “provide adequate function with minimal options.” You can only only rebalance by percentages vs. dollar amount (which has left me with $1 in a money market fund that I can’t move because it’s already 0% of my portfolio—minor but it annoys me every time I look), Empower is slow, live customer support is non-existent, etc. I assume this app gave my large company an attractive discount to move from Fidelity, but their bare bones mentality shows in the user experience.

by Jason2398

I think the entry point to Empower and retirement information is better, but find that you are limited in terms of what you can and cannot see. For example, I have not been able to see transaction history, investment performance, etc. I found the old mobile site clumsy to navigate but you had everything there. Empower is also clumsy to navigate but you don’t have Everything you need

Could be much better. Stop creating something new when there are blue prints out there from other retirement providers which are better. Focus of Empower seems to be to get users to enroll in managed services.

by MM. .

I was happy when my company moved our 401k from Transamerica to this app - the last app was horrendous. Gave Transamerica one star and this app gets two from me. This one is easier to navigate and to see the details of my investments. However, it doesn’t get a better review due to it’s lack of a helpful resource for app questions and the inability to see the $ invested in different types of retirement accounts (Roth vs 401k vs employer match..) in Empower . I have clicked every button on Empower to see my investment contribution categories. Upon not finding the answer, I contacted the email listed as the help email on Empower . They gave me browser instructions and told me to call in. I called in and they gave me browser instructions too. How sad that for a simple thing, I have to log into the browser. Defeats the purpose of having Empower .

by StonewallChuck

Empower works very well and has a lot of useful features, probably almost as many as you would have logging in to the this app website. I appreciate the sturdy functionality of Empower. I have had zero glitches or problems with Empower. My only frustration with Empower (and this app) is the “front-and-center” internal advertising for financial advisory/management services—Not only do I personally not need these services, but it would be too easy to sign up for them accidentally. IMO this advertising should be off to the side somewhere and definitely not on the landing page of Empower and website. But functionally this is a great app for managing my this app investments. I would recommend it for any current this app customers.

by GateGuruFanAgain

Overall, I find Empower to be user friendly and easily navigated. The widget, despite numerous tries and taking several different approaches, doesn't work consistently. The information talks about the token and the need to sign in, but regardless of whether I sign in or not, it doesn’t continue to bring the information into the widget. I’ve tried deleting and reinstalling Empower as well as restarting both my iPad and iPhone, but it still doesn’t function properly. If this is addressed, I will update to a five star review.

by Srgaty

I work for a state government that offers a voluntary IRA along with it's mandatory 401k. The IRA is through this app and being able to access it with an app is amazing given my states 401k isn't accessible by most third party apps.. Quicken, Personal Capital, etc.. None of them sync with my 401k, only Mint does, however Mint doesn't provide forecasting, returns, etc.. So basically it will only tell me my balance. I'm thankful because most government retirement accounts other than federal aren't really "tech friendly," as state and municipal governments aren't looking to spend money on things like mobile apps.
Now, I would like to more information. Projected returns, historical, fee schedules, etc. It's a good app, built well, but it could use some depth.

by MadRadRickMad

The latest update is even more horrible. It did not fix the Face ID problem. Now after logging in Empower simply says cannot load information. Problem occurred. Call support... Disappointed!!

App is neat and great. Simple to use. However I have noticed a bug with the iPhone Face ID. Every time I login I go and enable my Face ID. It asks me for my login and password to enable it. But once I close Empower , my Face ID setting is gone. Next time I open Empower , it says Face ID is disabled. Very irritating to use it since I have to redo all the steps again only to lose it all when I login next time. Please fix it.

by D.c.86

My company had a representative come in and talk about 401k. He mentioned Empower they have I wanted to increase my contribution so I downloaded Empower . Less than 10 minutes later I had it set up, knew how much was in there, made changes to my contribution and got a few others to download Empower during the presentation. Everything I can do with my 401k is right here

by 37retired

What ever the retiree logs on to check how their investments the website has been designed to have homepage information for somebody who is not retired. There is no way once you’re retired that you can contribute to your county plans any longer. I have repeatedly asked that you have a homepage for retirees and for people who are still contributing to this system. Perhaps someone can explain to me how I could contribute the amount of money you are indicating Needed for my retirement. Perhaps I have been misinformed in I could’ve been contributing the last 15 years of my retirement.

by DCH 777

Empower and website are greatly lacking. It is not easy to see how your individual investments change on a daily or weekly basis. The monthly view is very small with a scrollable window within a scrollable window. By the time you scroll to what you want you lose all headings . Very frustrating. Also, watch out when you rebalance and keep track of your percentages before you rebalance because when you change one of them all of the others change. I hate this feature. My non-work investment website is light years ahead of this one.

by Punk2050

I would like to be able to see the difference in what the combined totals from my employer match and my contributions vs the amount my investments have earned in a dollar amount. I would like to be able to view these on either the Ap or the desktop version (both would be great). Right now I only see the total amount in my account does this include my gains (and losses) or just the total in my account? Am I missing something? I do see the gains in percentage but of what value?

by Grumpy N Bumpy

It’s a good app, good design, good layout but it lacks a lot of useful info that would make it complete. You cannot see any of the contributions made by your employer or yourself. You cannot see any graphical data that I would consider important. Where is the graphical info of month to month market changes or info about the progression/ increase of your 401k account. Please fix promptly

by Bestone1999

It worked very well until a 3-4 days ago, in investments session, if you select “help me do it”, then “access online advice”, it should go advisory services, but it doesn’t work anymore, the page is just spinning for a while, but won’t load.

Please fix it

Update: believe it’s fixed, works again, thank you

by Nikepatch

For those of us maxing out our contributions, please add the option of a dollar amount contributions (by pay period and/or a yearly amount) so we don’t have to do any math gymnastics to ensure we don’t miss out on company match the last paycheck or two if there is no true up.

by End User - 33

I absolutely love this investment app. It’s incredibly easy to use. It feels like there are no persuasions by opinion; just the facts! I have used a couple of investment companies with their trading options and it seems like they are more geared towards the day trader. I would recommend Empower for the long term investor!