Principal
Financial Group has introduced My Virtual Coach, a new interactive resource that
helps retirement plan participants make successful, informed decisions about
their retirement savings for the future.
My
Virtual Coach is a personalized enrollment and education experience for
retirement plan participants of The Principal. In less than 10 minutes, the
resource walks participants through savings and investment decisions, and
empowers them to take immediate action as they step through the enrollment process.
This
tool is part of Principal PlanWorks, The Principal’s integrated approach to
retirement readiness that includes plan design, participant experience and
strategic measures. My Virtual Coach is available for all participants as part
of our engaging online experience, and it doesn’t have any additional cost, The
Principal tells PLANADVISER.
Participants
will be able to access this tool online and review topics based on their plan
design, including enrollment. The customization comes from the recordkeeping
The Principal already does for its clients as well as the participant’s own
interest/decisions. The Principal will promote the content to participants as
can their employer or financial professional; participants may also interact
with content once logged into their account.
Investment Product and Service Launches for the Week
Nationwide beefs up investment solution builder program; Acuitas
establishes new long/short equity option designed for retirement plans; LGIMA touts
new liability-based funds for small and mid-sized pensions.
The online solutions builder tool is a Web-based investment
platform that allows registered investment advisers (RIAs) to build and manage
retirement plan fund lineups and asset-allocation models for plan sponsors and
participants.
Nationwide explains that, with the enhancements, an RIA can now manage core fund lineups and asset
allocation models across all of his or her plans simultaneously. This
new functionality further enhances the tool by allowing an RIA to access
detailed fund information such as underlying fund performance, ratings, fees
and risk measures to facilitate investment selection and monitoring.
Advisers can also leverage the tool to add alternative funds
to models that are not part of the core fund lineup and provide a model
selection risk questionnaire for participants who are considering one of their
asset-allocation models. Other functions allow the RIA to establish and change
investment lineups and models in real time or up to 90 days in the future, and
set automatic rebalancing for models on a calendar quarter, semi-annual, annual
or date-specific basis.
NEXT: A new
long/short equity option designed for plans
Long/Short Equity
from Acuitas
Acuitas announced the launch of a long/short equity strategy
that builds on the firm's expertise in researching microcap and small cap
managers.
As the firm explains, the long/short product is a
multi-manager strategy intended for plan sponsors, endowments, wealth managers
and other institutional investors. It will be offered in a commingled vehicle
as well as in separate accounts for larger investors, “and comes at a time when
Acuitas believes market participants are increasingly looking for unique
sources of returns with less volatility and low correlations to their existing
portfolios.”
Acuitas says its proprietary research indicates that
microcap and small cap stocks remain an “undiscovered” asset class, since of
the estimated 5,200 publicly traded securities with market caps less than $1.5
billion and at least $500,000, more than 60% have no
sell-side analytical coverage. “This gives skilled professional investors an
opportunity to generate an informational advantage that has the potential to
result in strong returns,” according to Acuitas.
The investment philosophy centers on exploiting the return opportunities
available in the least efficient areas of the equity markets and “seeks to deliver
high absolute returns with low correlation to equity markets.”
To identify potential opportunities, Acuitas employs a fundamental
research process “supplemented by quantitative analysis, while also taking into
account the unique qualities of the capacity-constrained asset classes.” The research process includes a comprehensive analysis of the manager’s investment process, philosophy,
management team, and risk controls, Acuitas says.
LGIMA
Touts New Funds for Small and Mid-Sized Pension Plans
Legal & General Investment Management America, Inc. (LGIMA)
announced the planned release
of six new Legal & General Collective Investment Trust funds sponsored by
Reliance Trust Company of Delaware, an FIS Company.
LGIMA says the fund series is “an innovative product that provides small to
mid-size defined benefit pension plans access to liability-based solutions
which have been used by larger counterparts for a number of years. The funds
complement LGIMA’s existing range of pooled funds and are designed to offer
scalable and cost-effective solutions for pension plans.”
According
to the firm, the liability-based funds provide plans with a
comprehensive solution in which the funds are used as building blocks to hedge
actual plan liabilities across a wide range of durations and discounting
methodologies. The funds include both a levered and an unlevered structure to
accommodate a diverse set of strategic plan objectives that would otherwise be
cost prohibitive for small pension plans trying to achieve the same objective
with segregated accounts.
To provide additional transparency, LGIMA says the funds are
benchmarked against the Bank of America Merrill Lynch U.S. Pension indices,
which track the performance of typical pension liabilities across several
duration profiles to provide customized solutions that directly account for
actual client liabilities and help mitigate funding status volatility.