stockrowWhat it does
Voya Financial provides workplace retirement, savings and benefits services to U.S. employers and their employees. It also manages investments for institutions and individuals. The company has three reporting segments: Retirement, Investment Management and Employee Benefits.
Retirement helps employers run workplace savings plans. Its services include keeping track of participants’ accounts, administering plans and providing investment options. Voya also offers individual retirement accounts, financial planning and advice through its wealth management business.
Investment Management invests money in fixed income, equities, private assets and multi-asset strategies. Its clients include retirement plans, insurance companies, financial intermediaries and individual investors. The business also manages assets for other parts of Voya.
Employee Benefits sells group insurance and provides benefits administration. Its products include life and disability insurance, supplemental health coverage and stop-loss insurance, which reimburses self-insured employers for qualifying medical claims above specified thresholds. Through Benefitfocus, Voya helps employers and health plans administer benefits and enrollment, including benefits supplied by other insurers.
Voya was founded in 2013 and is headquartered at the Helmsley Building. Heather Lavallee is its chief executive officer.
How it makes money
Voya earns fees for administering retirement plans and managing investments, investment income on assets it holds, and premiums and fees from employee benefits. The amounts it earns depend on account values, client activity, investment spreads and insurance experience.
Retirement generates administrative, recordkeeping and advisory fees based on assets or participant accounts. It also earns investment income from its general account and other funds. Its profitability depends partly on the difference between the yield on general account investments and the rates credited to client accounts. Sales, participant deposits, asset retention and market movements affect the account values on which a significant portion of revenue depends.
Investment Management primarily charges fees based on the assets it manages. Some arrangements also provide incentive fees when returns exceed benchmarks or other performance hurdles. The segment receives fees for managing Voya’s general account and collects some administrative fees on outside-managed assets. It also earns revenue from seed investments in private equity, collateralized loan obligations and funds.
Employee Benefits earns premiums, fees and investment income. Underwriting income comes from the difference between premiums and mortality charges collected and benefits and expenses paid. The segment also charges for services such as benefits enrollment, leave management and health account administration. Its investment income includes spreads between investment yields and rates credited to policyholders.
For 2025, income before income taxes was $837 million; for the third quarter of 2026, adjusted operating earnings were $2.60 per diluted share. These are different measures and periods.
Customers and how it sells
Voya serves U.S. employers ranging from small businesses to large corporations and public-sector organizations. Retirement clients include schools, universities, hospitals, nonprofits and state and local governments. Employees and other participants use the company’s workplace plans, while individuals can also obtain retirement accounts and advice through its wealth management business.
As of December 31, 2025, Voya had over 18 million individual customer relationships and more than 50 thousand employer and institutional client relationships. Its benefits administration platform engaged approximately 12.2 million U.S. employees. In the third quarter of 2026, Voya reported 10.3 million retirement participant accounts.
Investment Management serves pension plans, insurers, endowments and foundations, as well as individual investors. Voya distributes workplace products through independent agents, brokers, advisers and third-party administrators, alongside its own sales teams and affiliated advisers. Its investment management distribution also reaches clients in Europe and Asia, including through arrangements with affiliates of Allianz Global Investors. Voya’s employees work throughout the U.S. and at its global services capability center in India.
Suppliers and costs
Voya relies on distribution partners as well as its own employees to reach customers. Independent agents, brokers, advisers and third-party administrators distribute retirement products, while its own wholesalers and sales teams support those channels. Retirement plan sponsors can select Voya investment options or third-party options; the benefits administration platform also handles products from third-party carriers.
Operating costs include employee expenses, commissions, technology and administration. Insurance benefits and claims are another cost of providing group life, stop-loss and voluntary coverage. Voya also uses reinsurance: through the end of 2025, it partnered with FullScopeRMS to reinsure its group disability business and provide leave management.
Voya plans to retain short-term disability risk and leave administration on new business and recapture its existing short-term disability and leave block from the reinsurer through 2027. The company recorded approximately $25 million of pre-tax severance expense in the third quarter of 2026 as part of its efficiency actions.
- Revenue$8.2B
- Cost of revenue−$3.4B
- Selling, general and administrative−$249.0M
- Other operating costs−$3.7B
- Operating income$837.0M
Competitive position
Voya competes with insurers, asset managers, recordkeepers and other financial institutions. In retirement plans, it names Empower and Fidelity among competitors for small corporate and mid-to-large corporate business; Fidelity and TIAA compete in education and nonprofit plans. Prudential and MetLife compete in stable value products.
In investment management, Voya names firms including Prudential, Invesco and T. Rowe Price. Competition depends on investment performance, investment process, product features and client service. In employee benefits, rivals vary by product: MetLife, Prudential and Unum compete in group life, while Alight and Businessolver compete in benefits administration. Price, claims service and administrative capabilities are among the factors that matter in those markets.
Voya’s retirement business competes on its service and investment offerings, technical expertise, relationships with plan sponsors and ability to handle complex plans. The company reported that it retained nearly 98% of its plans in the third quarter of 2026 and that average client tenure exceeded 15 years. Benefits administration sales cycles tend to be long because choosing a provider involves a significant employer commitment.
Our reading: established employer relationships and plan administration capabilities provide some protection against customer switching, although competitors offer similar services. Our reading: the connection between workplace plans, advice and Voya-managed investments provides distribution opportunities, but investment performance and pricing remain competitive tests.
| Competitor | Where they compete | Threat (our reading) |
|---|---|---|
| Fidelity | Retirement plans and health accounts | High |
| Empower | Corporate and government retirement plans | High |
| TIAA | Education and nonprofit retirement plans | High |
| Prudential | Stable value, investment management and group benefits | High |
| MetLife | Stable value and group benefits | High |
| Invesco | Investment management | Medium |
| T. Rowe Price | Investment management | Medium |
| Unum | Group life, disability and supplemental benefits | Medium |
Growth opportunities
Voya is pursuing growth by winning and retaining workplace plans, offering advice to retirement participants and expanding investment and benefits services. The company is investing in wealth management, bringing leave administration in-house, expanding multiple-employer and pooled-employer plan capabilities, and broadening its private-investments offering.
In retirement, Voya reported nearly $14 billion of defined contribution net inflows in the third quarter of 2026. A large plan implementation contributed to those flows; Voya does not expect a similar contribution in the fourth quarter. The company expects positive organic net flows for 2026.
Voya acquired OneAmerica Financial’s full-service retirement plan business in 2025, adding retirement assets, employee stock ownership plan capabilities and distribution partnerships. It completed the integration in the second quarter of 2026 and made the remaining acquisition payment.
Investment Management is seeking assets from institutional and international clients, including insurers interested in private fixed income. The company reported $2.9 billion in institutional net inflows in the year to date through the third quarter of 2026. In Employee Benefits, Voya is focusing on pricing, underwriting and risk selection in stop-loss insurance. It continues to target a stop-loss loss ratio of 77 to 80%.
- $4.2BFY2021
- $5.9BFY2022
- $7.3BFY2023
- $8.1BFY2024
- $8.2BFY2025
Structural risks
- Markets and interest rates: Market volatility can reduce asset-based fees, increase hedging costs and affect sales and outflows. Rising rates can reduce fixed-income investment prices, while credited rates that lag market rates can contribute to withdrawals from some products.
- Insurance experience: Employee Benefits earnings depend on premiums, claims and expenses. Voya said claims on its 2026 stop-loss book through October were favorable relative to 2024 and 2025, but the experience was still developing.
- Competition and flows: Voya may be unable to maintain or increase market share in competitive markets. The company expects modest full-service retirement outflows to continue, and a legacy investment-management relationship wind-down had a $5 billion impact in the third quarter of 2026.
- Operations and security: Interruptions or failures in telecommunications, cybersecurity, information technology or other systems, including failures to protect confidential information, could harm the business.
- Capital and regulation: A credit or financial-strength rating downgrade could cause a loss of business. The parent depends on subsidiary distributions for cash, and state rules restrict dividends from insurance subsidiaries.
Bottom line
Our reading
Our reading: Voya combines recurring workplace administration and asset-management fees with investment spreads and insurance underwriting, so its earnings depend on both customer relationships and market or claims outcomes. Its retirement platform creates opportunities to offer advice and investments to participants, while stop-loss performance and asset flows remain important variables. (item1; call_prepared; call_qa)