Products August 15, 2019

ADP Offers Plan Health Dashboard

It assigns points to various plan and participant features and recommends ways to improve participants’ retirement readiness outlook.

Reported by

ADP Retirement Services has launched an analytics-driven dashboard to help retirement plan advisers and sponsors to assess how effective a plan is.

“Across the board, it takes into account participant features as well as plan-level features,” Kristin Andreski, senior vice president and general manager, retirement services, at ADP, tells PLANADVISER. “At the participant level, it looks at participation rates, deferral rates and retirement readiness based on their age and account balance.  At the plan level, the factors are plan design and utilization of particular features such as auto-enrollment, Roth, loans and withdrawals.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PLANADVISER newsletters to keep up on the latest retirement plan adviser news.

ADP’s proprietary plan health scoring methodology then assigns points to particular plan metrics, such as participation, retirement readiness, diversification of investments and leakage, Andreski says.

“The key to it is participants’ retirement readiness,” she says. “The intent of the dashboard is to let plan sponsors and advisers know how well a plan is performing on an absolute as well as a relative basis compared to benchmarks of plans of similar sizes and industries. It highlights a plan’s strengths, points out opportunities to make improvements and enables sponsors to take action within the application to make those changes.

“Based on research we commissioned to better understand employee retirement preparations and outlook in January, retirement readiness remains a significant challenge, with nearly half of employees saving less than $5,000 annually,” Andreski continues. “With this offering, we seek to provide our customers with a holistic solution that helps plan sponsors be more proactive and strategic.”

She adds that what is unique about this plan health dashboard is that it uses real-time data.

Products August 15, 2019

Investment Product and Service Launches

Northern Trust enhances securities lending offering; Global X adds ETF suite to Model Market Center; and Cohen & Steers makes changes to REIT mutual fund.

Reported by
Art by Jackson Epstein

Art by Jackson Epstein

Northern Trust Enhances Securities Lending Offering

Northern Trust (NTRS) has developed a pricing engine utilizing machine learning and statistical techniques to drive revenue growth for clients, by forecasting the loan securities rate in the securities lending market.

Built on a hybrid-cloud platform that allows processing of data, the algorithm leverages strategic market data points from multiple asset classes and regions to project the demand for equities in the securities lending market. Northern Trust global securities lending traders are able to leverage these projections, together with their own market intelligence, to automatically broadcast lending rates for 34 global markets to Northern Trust’s extensive network of borrowers, thereby enhancing revenue opportunities for lending clients. 

For more stories like this, sign up for the PLANADVISERdash daily newsletter.

“Northern Trust continues to invest in emerging technologies to bring enhanced value to our clients,” says Pete Cherecwich, president of Corporate and Institutional Services at Northern Trust. “The use of machine learning in our global securities lending business enables greater pricing efficiency that helps clients improve revenue across portfolios. This enhances Northern Trust’s broad suite of securities financing capabilities, providing borrowers with highly automated, low transaction cost trade execution solutions in this cost-conscious market.”

Global X Adds ETF Suite to Model Market Center

Global X ETFs has added a suite of seven exchange-traded fund (ETF) model portfolios to the TD Ameritrade Institutional Model Market Center.

Model Market Center allows investors to access model portfolios from third-party model providers, with the ability to customize the models as needed through an integration with TD Ameritrade’s rebalancing platform, iRebal on Veo.

“We are excited to expand the availability of our model portfolios to more investors through this innovative platform,” says Jon Maier, CIO at Global X ETFs. “We hope that investors will be able to utilize the model portfolios to meet their needs and we are excited to be working with TD Ameritrade Institutional.”

The portfolios, which allocate across ETFs managed by Global X ETFs and other asset managers, are designed as packaged solutions to help serve investors’ needs. The model portfolios joining the Model Market Center platform include: Equity Thematic Disruptors ETF Model Portfolio; Equity Income ETF Model Portfolio; and five risk-based Core Series models: Conservative, Moderately Conservative, Moderate, Moderately Aggressive, and Aggressive.

Cohen & Steers Makes Changes to REIT Mutual Fund

Cohen & Steers is making key enhancements to its real estate investment trust (REIT) mutual fund, Cohen & Steers Realty Shares.

The expense ratio for the fund has been reduced by approximately 10% and Class A, C, I, R and Z shares are now offered alongside legacy Class L shares. 

Cohen & Steers Realty Shares has delivered an 11.7% annualized total return since its 1991 inception through June 30, outperforming the FTSE Nareit Equity REITs Index and the S&P 500 Index. With top-quartile performance in its Morningstar category for the first, third, fifth and 10-year periods, the fund garners a four star overall Morningstar rating.

The new share classes provide investors with access to the fund through brokerage, advisory and retirement platforms. The fund is available on advisory platforms at most major intermediaries, and brokerage availability is expected to expand with the addition of Class A and C shares. The Class L shares, to which existing shareholders have been mapped, are available to new investors as well. 

“The U.S. REIT market has evolved considerably over decades, with the disruptive impact of technology and demographic shifts creating new opportunities in emerging property sectors such as cell towers, data centers and rental housing,” says Tom Bohjalian, senior portfolio manager and head of U.S. Real Estate Investments. “We believe this is an attractive time to consider allocating to REITs with an active manager, with healthy fundamentals and defensive characteristics potentially driving favorable absolute and relative returns.”

«