Transamerica Launches Asset Allocation Service for Participants

 Transamerica Retirement Services launched an asset allocation service designed to make saving for retirement easier for participants in company-sponsored retirement plans.

PortfolioXpress uses the plan’s core investment lineup to build a series of model portfolios along a glide path that is based on the participant’s retirement date. The glide path shifts from a more aggressive investment approach to a more conservative approach as the participant nears retirement, and is automatically rebalanced over time. Plan sponsors can choose a glide path that goes to the expected retirement date or a glide path that continues through retirement.  

“Transamerica is committed to making saving for retirement easier,” said Stig Nybo, president of Transamerica Retirement Services. “PortfolioXpress makes it easier for plan participants to save by automatically allocating the participant’s savings in the plan’s investments based on the participant’s chosen retirement date. The automatic rebalancing feature can help savers who don’t actively monitor their investments today. This new service is another way that Transamerica is helping advisrrs and their clients to improve plan participants’ readiness for retirement.”  

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PortfolioXpress will be available to financial advisers and new retirement plan sponsors, who can choose investments from more than 40 advisory firms to construct the plan’s core investment menu, which is used to populate the model portfolios along the chosen glide path. The plan’s core investment lineup can be changed at any time.   

More information on Transamerica Retirement Services is available at http://www.TA-Retirement.com.

 

Rate of Poverty Among Seniors Increased

Between 2005 and 2009, the rate of poverty among American seniors rose as they aged.

The number of new entrants into poverty also increased during this time, according to a report by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI). Poverty rates fell in the first half of the last decade for almost all age groups of older Americans (ages 50 and older), though they increased since 2005 for every age group.   

Poverty rates, as defined by U.S. Census poverty thresholds, were highest for the oldest of the elderly. Almost 15% of those older than age 85 were in poverty in 2009, compared with approximately 10.5% of those older than 65, EBRI found. Additionally, in 2009, 6% of those age 85 older were new entrants in poverty.   

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According to Sudipto Banerjee, EBRI research associate and author of the report, “As people age, personal savings and pension account balances are depleted, and as people age, their medical expenditures tend to increase. Also, the rising poverty rates noted correspond to the two economic recessions that occurred during the last decade.”

 

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The EBRI analysis also found:  

 

  • In 2009, the poverty rate for Hispanics was 21% higher than for whites, while for blacks it was 17% higher than for whites; 
  • Poverty rates for women were nearly double those of men for almost all years in the survey period. For example, in 2009, poverty rates were 7% for men and 13% for women; 
  • More than one in five (20.9%) single women above age 65 lived in poverty in 2009; and 
  • The odds of suffering a health condition (acute or otherwise) goes up 45% to 55% for those below the poverty line.  

The data for the study came from the University of Michigan’s Health and Retirement Study, sponsored by the National Institute on Aging. The full report is published in the April 2012 EBRI Notes, “Time Trends in Poverty for Older Americans Between 2001–2009,” at www.ebri.org.

 

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