Hot off the Presses
Participant and Sponsor Tools
Plan sponsors can see how on track their plan is for adequate retirement savings with OneCheck from OneAmerica. Retirement plan health monitoring tools and reports use inflation rates and participants’ average retirement age, among other data from the plan sponsor. By way of the reports, plan administrators can consider the impact that “auto” features, education and portfolio diversification assistance might have on the plan and on participants.
American National Bank of Texas (ANB) has teamed up with several firms to offer a retirement plan services solution known as the Select Open Architecture Retirement (SOAR) program, which can be customized to meet the service needs of plan sponsors and participants. Fiduciary protection for plan sponsors is provided via Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) 3(16) services from ANB, which also acts as the named fiduciary and named discretionary trustee.
An interactive Retirement Readiness Dashboard from New York Life Retirement Plan Services helps plan sponsors gauge the effectiveness of their plans. The dashboard determines a plan participant’s level of retirement readiness and displays tools to illustrate how adding features, including automatic enrollment and automatic deferral escalation, can affect participant readiness.
Employers can evaluate and improve their workers’ retirement readiness with Retirement Vision 2020 from Fidelity Investments. The program walks users through designing the retirement plan for income; accounting for health care expenses; engaging and empowering employees via advice resources; and helping employees transition into retirement spending, with confidence.
Plan participants can manage their accounts and prepare for their future with Voya Financial’s myOrangeMoney®, an online retirement planning portal. The planning and account management tool tracks participants’ savings progress based on customizable goals and benchmarks. Other performance data associated with retirement plan investments can be factored in for more complete translations to projected future monthly income.
Pension plan clients of Cambridge Associates can evaluate specific asset and liability risks in their investment portfolios with RiskFirst’s PFaroe risk analytics platform. Detailed reporting helps pension plan sponsors review the probability of particular outcomes for defined benefit (DB) plans, with reporting available for assets and liabilities.
The goal of the Fiduciary Awareness Quiz from Guardian Insurance & Annuity Co. (GIAC) is to deepen plan sponsors’ understanding of their fiduciary obligations and responsibilities, while providing solutions to diminish fiduciary risk. Fifteen yes-or-no questions assess the test-taker’s knowledge about qualified plan fiduciary best practices, as well as those practices being used to administer their plan. Test scores can be benchmarked to determine where the plan sponsor’s fiduciary knowledge ranks against that of peers.
Four tablet-friendly retirement readiness modeling tools from Wealth Management Systems Inc. aim to help participants address the gap between savings and the amount needed for a desired lifestyle in retirement. Users can set and track retirement savings goals based on projected income needs. Dynamic modeling features let users change inputs to see the impact on longer-term retirement income projections; the tools address long-term planning, Social Security, plan contributions and distribution planning.
LPL Financial LLC unveiled its Worksite Financial Solutions website to help employees gain confidence in their financial future. The objective is to demystify retirement by offering plan participants education about their options through different life stages. Online tools such as calculators, videos, articles and tutorials aim to help participants make better financial decisions throughout their careers and become more confident about the future.
Recordkeeper RiversEdge Advanced Retirement Solutions has developed a mobile retirement planning application (app) for plan participants. RiversEdge Mobile enables users to check account balances, view investment options, monitor investment performance, track contributions and review transactions. The app is available for free and can be downloaded for Apple and Android devices.
Adviser Tools
New courses in the redesigned Chartered Financial Consultant® (ChFC®) designation may better prepare advisers for the financial planning challenges that come with today’s increasingly diverse and complex family and financial situations. Issues include client divorces, retirement income planning, behavioral finance, guidance for families with special needs children and issues that affect the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. The ChFC designation requires nine college-level courses.
Rocaton Investment Advisors LLC has adopted RiskFirst’s PFaroe Web-based analytics platform to help clients better analyze and manage pension plan risk. Risk managers gain deeper insights into their risk exposure across multi-asset portfolios with the PFaroe platform, Rocaton says. Users may license tools for day-to-day management or specific projects.
The Pension Resource Institute LLC (PRI) reached a partnership agreement with FRA PlanTools that allows PRI subscribers to easily order and access FRA PLANbenchmark reports. The PLANbenchmark reporting tools generate a customized report, created from data about a specific plan or client, to allow advisers to show their plan sponsor clients how their plans stack up against the market.
Through an agreement with Schwab Intelligent Technologies, Morningstar joined the Schwab OpenView Gateway platform, giving it access to Schwab systems as well as those of other participating technology providers. The integration will make real-time custodial data from Charles Schwab available within Morningstar Office—a scalable practice and portfolio management platform that facilitates advanced research, performance reporting and secure client communications.
Russell Investments made a number of updates to its Economic Indicators Dashboard, an analysis tool that facilitates adviser/investor conversations about the U.S. economy. The lineup now includes the Standard & Poor’s (S&P)/Case-Shiller Home Price Index and the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield, data that is more appropriate as the economy continues to stabilize and strengthen after the fiscal crisis.
Principal Financial Group created a life insurance option to help advisers solve challenging coverage questions for business owners. Key features include the ability to take loans without creating a taxable event, provided the policy is not designed as a modified endowment contract, and an investment component that allows for tax-advantaged retirement investing. As cash value builds, the policyholder does not incur income taxes for interest earned. The policy can be customized, and the premium amount and timing of payments can be changed.
Retirement plan advisers can address a range of Social Security issues with Omyen Corp.’s expanded suite of digital Social Security planning tools. Software tools in the Social Security Maximizer can model government pensions, children’s benefits and lump-sum payments. A new branded Social Security Checkup tool helps estimate and compare benefits with retirement expenses. The program includes branded marketing collateral and branded client reports.
Adviser clients of Retirement Revolution, the retirement planning and investment platform provider, now have access to digital branding, communication and database services through AdviceIQ, a centralized digital hub for advisers to publish insightful articles and gain exposure in localized rankings. The hub can be used to promote advisers through branded content syndicated across a range of media partners, including CNBC.com and TheStreet.com.
Guide Financial rolled out an investment analytics and portfolio-builder program that gives advisers advanced cash-flow analytics. An investment-builder feature, which uses behavioral finance techniques to drive higher client engagement, makes it easier for advisers to set up income-linked savings targets and implement automatic future savings increases that grow with income levels.
Advisers can use Matrix Financial Solutions’ ModelTool(k)it to create, manage and implement portfolio models of recommended mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in 401(k) plans. The tool gives advisers advanced portfolio modeling and managed account capabilities, as well as access to the 25,000 mutual funds and ETFs available on the Matrix Trading Platform.
Investments
MassMutual Retirement partnered with BlackRock to introduce MassMutual Managed Allocations, a customizable, lower-cost alternative to managed accounts for use in defined contribution (DC) retirement plans. MassMutual provides recordkeeping for this managed account alternative, and BlackRock assumes fiduciary responsibility for designing and updating glide path models and asset allocations included in client portfolios.
American Century Investments rolled out three fixed-income funds for defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) plans. The American Century Emerging Markets Debt fund incorporates emerging market debt with a global currency overlay. The American Century Strategic Income fund takes an income-focused strategy that offers broad securities. The American Century Short Duration Strategic Income fund has a 50% maximum single-sector exposure limit. The funds are available in a range of share classes, including R and R6.
Evanston Capital Management debuted the Evanston Alternative Opportunities Fund, a closed-end, non-exchange fund. The fund seeks long-term, risk-adjusted returns in order to achieve its objective of investing all its assets in underlying hedge funds, many of which seek to achieve their investment objectives with minimal correlation to traditional equity or fixed-income indices.
Nationwide Retirement Solutions released the Nationwide Diverse Managers Fund, which takes a balanced approach to investing in U.S. and international stocks, small-cap stocks and fixed-income securities. The fund is managed by four separate minority- and woman-owned investment firms and is available in institutional share classes.
The Seeyond Multi-Asset Allocation Fund from Natixis Global Asset Management (NGAM) invests in stocks, bonds and volatility as an asset class. The global tactical asset-allocation fund aims for greater diversification by integrating equity volatility as an asset class while investing in global stocks and bonds. Equity volatility can manage risk or seek returns in different types of environments, especially valuable during market downturns.
A mutual fund from Pacific Life Funds offers a simplified approach to alternatives investing and aims to increase diversification. Using a fund-of-funds structure, the PL Diversified Alternatives Fund invests in other mutual funds that follow alternative or nontraditional investment strategies. Asset classes include currency, emerging market debt, emerging market equity, floating-rate loans, global absolute return funds, inflation-managed bonds, precious metals and real estate.
Two indices from Wilshire Associates Inc. cover the fast-growing category of liquid alternatives. The Wilshire Liquid Alternative Index aims to deliver a broad market measure for diversified liquid alternative investment strategies implemented in mutual fund structures. The Wilshire Focused Liquid Alternative Index embeds screening criteria to help firms build and monitor investable liquid alternative products in other formats, such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
A target-date fund (TDF) series from AllianceBernstein, co-managed by Morningstar Associates, has a cast of managers including Franklin Templeton and PIMCO. The AllianceBernstein Multi-Manager Select Retirement Funds offer a range of diversified asset classes aimed at achieving more consistent results and mitigating short-term risk. AllianceBernstein will design and manage the glide path, adjusting exposures as market conditions change. Morningstar will select funds from participating firms. The funds are expected to be available by early November.
The Endowment Collective Investment Fund (CIF) from Alta Trust Co. aims to bring an endowment investment philosophy and liquid alternative opportunities to defined contribution (DC) plans. The fund seeks to create a “three-dimensional” portfolio, with alternative investments such as private equity, hedge strategies and real assets. A core-satellite portfolio construction incorporates low-cost, cap-weighted equity and fixed-income exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Fundamentally weighted funds are used to gain alpha.