Products October 28, 2014

LPL Financial Launches Worksite App

LPL Financial unveiled a new Worksite Financial Solutions mobile application (app) that extends retirement plan participant and sponsor services provided through the firm’s desktop platform.
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LPL says the app provides plan participants with remote account access, allowing for key account management functions to be performed through a smartphone or other device. The launch of the Worksite Financial Solutions mobile app reflects LPL’s ongoing commitment to delivering flexible solutions that address plan participants’ evolving financial needs, the firm says.

LPL expects to officially launch the app by the end of the year. With the new resource, clients and plan participants will gain access the following features:

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  • End-to-end plan enrollment support to guide users through all phases of the retirement planning process;
  • Access to qualified LPL advisers and the firm’s Retirement Results Team, which both provide education and support for participants on managing their retirement plan accounts; and
  • Numerous financial education tools, including calculators, tutorials, videos and articles on how to manage different phases of the financial lifecycle.

The technology offers significant benefits for advisers as well, LPL claims, as the app can be co-branded for use in each adviser’s practice. The app can also be used to help enhance the adviser-participant relationship by providing additional opportunities for communication and interaction on a regular basis.

“Retirement plan participants demand the ability to make financial decisions when they want, where they want,” adds David Reich, executive vice president of Retirement Partners.

LPL Financial LLC is an independent broker/dealer (B/D), a custodian for registered investment advisers (RIAs) and a wholly owned subsidiary of LPL Financial Holdings Inc. Worksite Financial Solutions is a retirement plan platform offered exclusive to LPL Financial and its adviser partners.

More information on the firm is at www.lpl.com.

Products October 28, 2014

MacKay Shields Introduces Bond Strategy CITs

Investment Manager MacKay Shields LLC is expanding into the U.S. retirement market by delivering new investment opportunities for qualified defined contribution retirement plan sponsors.
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MacKay will act as adviser to two SEI Trust Company sponsored collective investment trusts (CITs), implementing MacKay’s Core Plus Bond and Unconstrained Bond strategies.

“As the retirement market and the investment landscape continue to evolve, we see participants and sponsors looking for key ways to diversify their portfolios with well-established core fixed income strategies along with alternatives to traditional fixed income strategies. To help defined contribution investors meet their objectives, we believe that our Core Plus and Unconstrained Bond strategies are well-positioned to deliver attractive risk-adjusted returns,” MacKay told PLANADVISER.

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The MacKay Shields Core Plus Bond CIT aims to deliver returns by opportunistically identifying investments in global developed and emerging markets as well as high yield debt securities. The MacKay Shields Unconstrained Bond CIT employs a flexible investment process that allocates investments across the global fixed income markets. MacKay Shields has been managing these strategies via mutual funds and separate accounts since 1999 (Core Plus Bond) and 2009 (Unconstrained Bond).

Defined Contribution plans can get access to the Core Plus and Unconstrained strategies through SEI and their partnerships with recordkeeping platforms or MacKay Shields and NYLIM (New York Life Investment Management), the company said.

“Collective investment trusts have emerged as a key vehicle for plan sponsors moving from the defined benefit to the defined contribution model,” says John Akkerman, MacKay’s Global Head of Distribution. “We at MacKay Shields are committed to meeting institutional investors’ needs as the retirement market continues to evolve, and we believe that collective investment trusts implementing our established fixed income strategies will create new opportunities for plan sponsors as they continue to adopt the defined contribution model.”

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