Investment Product and Service Launches

Art by Jackson Epstein

Pacific Life, Wespath and WTW Partner on QLAC Option  

Pacific Life has announced a new collaboration with Wespath Benefits and Investments and WTW to provide the qualifying longevity annuity contract option in Wespath’s LifeStage Retirement Income program.

According to the firms, the optional longevity income protection feature helps protect participants against the risk of outliving their savings. With Pacific Life’s QLAC, participants are guaranteed a retirement income stream starting at age 80, regardless of how long the participant and, if applicable, the participant’s spouse, lives. In addition, the QLAC can help to reduce required minimum distributions, providing additional tax planning options.

Any associated guarantees are subject to the claims-paying ability and financial strength of the issuing insurance company. Product availability and features may vary by state.

Principal Global Investors Launches Active Real Estate ETF

Principal Global Investors has announced the launch of the Principal Real Estate Active Opportunities ETF.

According to Principal Global Investors, this is the firm’s first semi-transparent exchange-traded fund, and it is now available for trading on the New York Stock Exchange. The actively managed fund has a focused concentration on the non-traditional property sectors of the publicly traded U.S. real estate market. Its objective is to seek total return.

Jill Brown, managing director of the U.S. wealth platform at Principal Global Investors, says the new fund combines two core strengths of Principal—active management and real estate investing—to provide clients with a strategy that seeks to improve portfolio outcomes. She notes that the fund is thematic and gives investors exposure to in-demand real estate sectors, with the benefits of a liquid ETF structure.

Due to its concentrated exposure to non-traditional property sectors, Brown says, the Principal Real Estate Active Opportunities ETF can enhance core equity portfolios for investors as a satellite allocation. According to the firm, this approach creates the potential for better portfolio outcomes and higher total returns, with improved diversification generated by the resilient growth characteristics of many public real estate investment trusts in the non-traditional sectors.

Non-traditional real estate sectors include property types like data centers, life sciences facilities, single-family rentals, medical offices and self-storage spaces. According to Principal, these sectors have been highly resilient the past few years. Shifts in the economy and structural themes ranging from demographics and infrastructure to globalization and technological innovation are driving change and opportunity for these non-traditional property types.

BNY Mellon Investment Management Partners with UBS to Offer Model Portfolios 

BNY Mellon Investment Management has announced the launch of a suite of model portfolios designed specifically for clients of UBS Wealth Management USA. Moving forward, UBS’s wealth management clients will have access to BNY Mellon Investment Management’s suite of six model portfolios on the UBS ACCESS platform.

According to BNY Mellon, the models are designed to adapt to market swings and help deliver more consistent results over time. They can provide a foundation to help financial professionals meet their clients’ income-generation goals with disciplined risk mitigation. Featuring an open architecture structure, the portfolios can also identify the most relevant products to contribute toward achieving each model’s investment objective. To help further optimize the portfolios, each portfolio invests in both active and passive investments.

The suite of portfolios capitalizes on three distinct model approaches for income-seeking clients and are also available in tax-aware versions. The first is Stable Income, which allows clients to focus on income in an effort to mitigate downside risk, with a short investment horizon; the second is Strategic Income, which focuses on seeking a higher level of sustainable yield and aims to optimize yield per unit of risk on a longer investment horizon; and the third is Growth and Income, which is designed for multi-generational investing and focuses on providing near-term income while seeking to grow principal.