Tag: CITs

The lawsuit against Principal Global Investors and related entities was abandoned.

The medical testing company is already facing scrutiny for its use of actively managed investments within its retirement plan; it is now the subject of a broader excessive fee lawsuit.

A similar lawsuit was filed in May against an investment manager and a different plan sponsor.

The lawsuit argues that while the TDFs in the plan are CITs, they are private label CITs with much higher expense ratios than the typical CITs offered by JPMorgan.

Collective investment trusts are becoming more transparent; case in point, Hand Benefits & Trust Co. has gone live with more than 30 CIT tickers on the Nasdaq Fund Network.

Knowledge about and connections to the collective investment trust marketplace can be a key selling point for retirement plan advisers in 2020 and beyond—especially when serving small and mid-sized clients.

Among the attractive but less-often-discussed features of collective investment trusts is the fact that the sponsoring trustee—a bank or trust company—must commit to acting in the best interest of unit holders.

The bill introduced to Congress is designed to ensure public sector and nonprofit retirement plans have the same access to low-cost investments as for-profit retirement plans do.

“We’ve heard the need for these investment options in 403(b) plans from advisers, consultants and plan sponsors for decades,” says Bruce Corcoran, managing vice president/head of 403(b) Business at ICMA-RC.

The two entities look to encourage CIT adoption among investors, a move that they say has stalled due to low awareness of the funds.

While they have grown at a compound annual growth rate of 7.25% a year in the past five years, if advisers were better educated about them and if the transparency issue could be addressed, that growth could rise significantly, according to the research firm.

A BrightScope/ICI study also found collective investment trusts (CITs) accounted for a larger share of assets in larger plans than smaller plans.

Many retirement plan participants want to deploy their values in their portfolios, as do portfolio managers; advisers can help make this happen.