Products September 3, 2014

Unified Trust Company Adopts AXIS Retirement Platform

Unified Trust Company has partnered with Castle Rock Innovations to implement the AXIS Retirement Analytics Platform for plan cost and performance benchmarking purposes.
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Castle Rock says the AXIS platform has been built from the ground up exclusively for the retirement industry. The platform supports compliance efforts and provides services that allow plan advisers and provider representatives to more efficiently manage their books of business. AXIS also features a large database of retirement plan analytics and is updated at least on a monthly basis to provide a real-time and unbiased industry benchmark for advisers and their retirement plan sponsor clients.

Through the AXIS benchmarking module, Unified Trust Company is able to generate a real-time analysis of fees and plan provisions—enabling advisers to quickly aggregate information across thousands of plans to anonymously compare fee reasonableness against a comparable plan base. Unified Trust Company says its commitment to AXIS strengthens its efforts to create a full-disclosure fee policy.

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Khash Sarrafi, CEO of Castle Rock Innovations, says the AXIS methodology can be tailored based on specific client needs. For Unified Trust Company, the solution was tailored to address the firm’s responsibilities as a named plan fiduciary for its clients. 

More information about Unified Trust Company is available at www.unifiedtrust.com. More about Castle Rock and the AXIS platform is at www.axisretirement.com.

Products September 3, 2014

Indices Offer ESG Measurement for European Companies

Thomson Reuters launched a suite of indices to measure the performance of European companies with superior ratings for environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) practices.
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The Europe indices are one part of the global family of Thomson Reuters Corporate Responsibility Indices (CRI) that provide a comprehensive, objective and transparent rules-based benchmarking solution for measuring global ESG performance, the firm says. The Thomson Reuters CRI Indices use a network of data, analytics and tools to allow investors to apply filters based on the industry, country and regional focus of a company’s operations. The indices remain objective and transparent through a greater emphasis on quantitative outcomes rather than qualitative corporate statements. Additionally, the process does not use negative screening to exclude certain industries, resulting in more precise and diversified benchmarks. 

“The Thomson Reuters CRI Europe Indices mean that investors are now able to measure the performance of European markets while being assured that all included stocks have ESG ratings superior to the weighted average for indices such as the S&P 500 or MSCI EAFE,” says Joseph LaCorte, president of S Network Global Indexes which serves as a consultant to Thomson Reuters on the development and maintenance of the indices and ratings.

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The Thomson Reuters CRI Europe Indices include:

  • Thomson Reuters CRI Europe ESG Index;
  • Thomson Reuters CRI Europe Environmental Index;
  • Thomson Reuters CRI Europe Governance Index; and
  • Thomson Reuters CRI Europe Social Index.

Live calculation of the indices began on July 28, 2014. Historical data is available from December 31, 2007. Detailed information about the Thomson Reuters CRI Europe Indices including rules, constituent weights, historical performance data and quarterly snapshots can be found on www.trcri.com.

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