Hot Off the Presses
Sponsor and Participant Tools
Mercer introduced My Retirement Workshop, an online retirement planning and education campaign for employees whose 401(k) plans it administers. Interactive tools and hands-on instruction help investors fine-tune their retirement plans. Participants can access the tool through their plan’s website.
LPL Financial launched the Rollover Results Program, a platform to educate plan participants, expedite rollovers and help advisers serve more of their sponsor clients’ separating employees. The program can open individual retirement accounts (IRAs), assist with retirement account transfers and provide information about the rollover process.
Collaborating with fi360, CEFEX and Cambridge Fiduciary Services, The Board Institute Inc. created a Web-based evaluation tool, enabling boards of directors to assess the strengths of investment policies and helping them follow best practices in the face of increasing focus on investment losses.
Assessing Retirement Plan Value is an online resource from Principal Financial Group that helps plan sponsors grasp the new retirement plan disclosure regulations. The service offers tips and tools to understand and evaluate plan fees and services. Financial professionals can use the tools to help clients comply with a key fiduciary obligation: determining whether fees are reasonable for the services received.
MetLife enhanced its multiproduct, multichannel M-Powered Enrollment program for plan participants making multiple benefit enrollment decisions, and broadened its availability. Features include end-to-end online enrollment, advice from an online, interactive avatar and benefits education tools.
SunGard launched a mobile browser option for its Relius Administration Web suite of products. The tool gives plan participants on-demand access, from any mobile device, to their retirement plan information, including personal data, plan status, services, account balance and transaction history.
Morningstar expanded its managed product databases to assist with compliance with new participant fee-disclosure requirements. The research firm increased the number of strategies it tracks, as well as the amount of data it gathers in its collective investment trust, open-end mutual fund, money market fund, exchange-traded fund (ETF) and private fund database, which includes custom target-date funds (TDFs).
Paychex introduced a mobile smartphone application, allowing users to access their Paychex benefits information online. Employees can view personal payroll, benefits and retirement information, including check stubs, W-2 forms, flex-spending account balances, and loans and contributions. Employers can access employee contact lists, payroll journals, cash requirements reports and more.
A website from ShareBuilder 401k, www.401kFeeSaver.com, allows companies to calculate and compare 401(k) plan fees via a free fee-checker. Employers enter their plans’ assets and investment product fees to calculate the employee fee percentage.
J.P. Morgan Asset Management, with alliance partner FASCore, launched Retirement Link, an offering to provide recordkeeping solutions to small and midsize retirement plan markets.
Safeguard Financial introduced a managed real estate
investment program for self-directed individual retirement account (IRA) and
401(k) plans with investments in geographic areas that provide favorable rent-
to-value ratios and stable employment. Investments target a return of 9% to
12%.
A planning tool from Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America has given advisers a new framework to help participants with retirement planning. The “4 Cs” of retirement—Clarity, Comfort of living, Cost of living and Certainty of retirement income—prompt employees to examine their expectations for retirement, factoring in inflation and annuities.
Adviser Tools
Rosenbaum Law Firm and DALBAR Inc. initiated an Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) 3(38) certification program for advisers. As of July 1, fiduciaries were required to declare their status in writing because of the new ERISA fee disclosure regulations.
Primerica began an on-demand, online training program developed by Integrated Retirement. The courses help advisers master the technical concepts needed to serve individual retirement accounts (IRAs) and business retirement plan clients.
An online tool from Pacific Life helps advisers engage clients in conversation about building sustainable lifetime retirement income. Developed using product-allocation research, the tool offers up to three possible strategies, with a higher retirement sustainability quotient (RSQ) to illustrate how the client might increase his likelihood of creating a more sustainable lifetime retirement income.
NFP Advisor Services Group published a study that educates advisers about how to maximize the value of their practice across various time horizons in advance of succession, and suggests three steps to improve the value of a practice and plan an effective succession.
A benchmarking tool from Pulse Logic helps advisers assess the services they provide to decide what fees are appropriate. Based on plan size and service requirements, the Plan Advisor Services and Fees Guide aids plan advisers in evaluating the services they provide and then determining reasonable fees to charge plan sponsor clients.
Nationwide Financial’s 408(b)(2) Solutions Kit includes a summary of the Department of Labor fee disclosure requirements and information to help plan fiduciaries understand their responsibilities for reviewing the reasonableness of fees paid to service providers. Also included are pointers advisers can use with sponsors to explain the services they offer.
Morningstar Annuity Intelligence evaluates variable annuities for advisers and broker/dealers, giving real-time data on more than 100,000 annuity subaccounts and 1,950 annuity contracts. With features from two other Morningstar tools, the offering has a new user interface with simplified navigation, enhanced search functions, and new research features and functionality. Users can search for and compare variable annuity contracts, and generate reports.
TD Ameritrade Institutional created a marketing tool kit for registered investment advisers (RIAs) to outline the benefits of working with a fiduciary adviser. Tools include presentation personalizing, guidebooks, white papers and online third-party resources. A series of advertisements is designed to educate investors about the differences between brokers and RIAs.
The Financial Services Institute launched a mobile application to help financial advisers advocate on regulatory issues for the industry using smartphones and tablets.
The broker/dealer First Allied Securities expanded its advisory platform, Guided Portfolio Solutions (GPS), to give its advisers a practical approach to fee-based business and enable them to tailor client investment solutions to individual risk tolerance and objectives across all programs managed on the platform.
T. Rowe Price released a mobile application, allowing investors to manage their accounts and view fund information and asset-allocation charts; to track fund performance; and to check the status of pending transactions.
SunTrust Banks launched Retirement Income Navigator, which lets its advisers help clients maximize retirement income while drawing down assets in a tax-advantaged way. The tool’s steps—plan, invest, manage—use tax-sensitive technology to generate a specific plan of action. The tool was developed with LifeYield LLC.
Charles Schwab made available 28 universal workflows in the Schwab OpenView Workflow Library, through Schwab Intelligent Technologies. They function as guides for independent advisers and their staff to perform critical aspects of practice management, including lead generation, client onboarding and service requests, as well as business operations.
Investments
Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company unveiled the Smart Foundation product suite of three variable annuities, which can be customized with benefits for competitive withdrawal rates, flexible account access and death benefit protection.
Fidelity introduced its first global equity income funds, designed to meet investor demand for equity income strategies. Fidelity Global Equity Income and Fidelity Advisor Global Equity Income aim to exceed the yield of the MSCI All Country World Index.
The Phoenix Companies unveiled a single, premium, fixed-index annuity for people approaching or in retirement. The Personal Protection Choice annuity has six indexed accounts, a fixed account and principal protection from investment loss.
Arrow Investment Advisors launched institutional share classes for the firm’s five tactical and alternative investment mutual funds. The share classes eliminate the standard 12b-1 fee, resulting in a lower overall expense ratio, and have an investment minimum of $1 million.
Prudential Investments introduced the Prudential Jennison International Opportunities Fund. The fund’s three share classes aim for long-term capital growth and broad international diversification by investing in companies outside the U.S.
Neuberger Berman Group, with multiple subadvisers, launched the Neuberger Berman Absolute Return Multi-Manager Fund, which aims to offer the liquidity and accessibility of a mutual fund and the underlying investments of hedge fund strategies.
Five dynamic allocation models powered by CAPTRUST research were introduced by Jefferson National. The tax-deferred investments are available through Jefferson National’s Monument Advisor flat-fee variable annuity and seek to generate superior risk-adjusted returns through portfolio construction, tactical asset allocation and investment manager selection.
Manning & Napier introduced the Goal Collective Investment Trust (CIT) Funds, a suite of 10 actively managed target-date funds (TDFs) that will invest in a variety of exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
The Hartford added three investment managers and 16 investment options to its defined contribution (DC) retirement program offerings for corporate and noncorporate plan sponsors.
Lincoln Financial Distributors’ ChoicePlus Assurance variable annuity was added to Wells Fargo Advisors LLC’s advisory variable annuity program. Annuity options include an open architecture that enables control over investment choices, and a set of asset-allocation funds, designed to help reduce volatility, protect account values and maximize income in retirement.
Palmer Square Capital Management LLC unveiled the Palmer Square SSI Alternative Income Fund, which seeks absolute returns and a steady income stream. SSI’s strategy is investing long in convertible securities and establishing short positions in the common stock of the issuers of those convertible securities.
F-Squared Investments has upgraded its AlphaSector Fixed Income Indices, now rebranded as AlphaSector INFInity. Some key changes are the addition of a de-risk option, allowing 100% conversion to short-term treasuries in challenging markets; the inclusion of Treasury inflation-protected securities (TIPs) and floating rate securities; and a revised investment algorithm with an absolute-return decision framework.
A concentrated equity fund, the Vaughan Nelson Select Fund, launched by Natixis Global Asset Management, seeks value opportunities across market capitalizations and is designed as a potential return enhancer for long-term equity investors and a complement to index fund positions.
Advantus Capital Management launched an institutional share class of the Advantus Strategic Dividend Income Fund, which invests in a wide array of dividend-paying equity securities.