Investment Product Launches for the Week

The Guardian Insurance and Annuity Company announced the addition of 15 new investment options within the Guardian Choice and The Guardian Advantage lineup of retirement products.

According to Guardian, the additional options increase the flexibility and breadth of asset classes for plan sponsors using these products to fund their qualified retirement plans. The additions include offerings from new fund families such as Pioneer and Virtus, as well as ones from existing fund families, including T. Rowe Price, BlackRock and Wells Fargo. Health and technology sector funds from Janus have also been added, Guardian says.

The new offerings increase the total number of funds available in The Guardian Choice program to 135 and in The Guardian Advantage to 108.

Guardian specifically highlights the new availability of the Stadion Maximum Growth Portfolio, which has been added to the qualified default investment alternative (QDIA) managed account service provided to Guardian clients by Stadion Money Management. The new portfolio is designed to give younger, less risk-averse investors the potential to capture more market gains while still being defensively managed to provide downside protection in severe down markets.

NEXT: Oppenheimer adds multi-asset option 

OppenheimerFunds this week launched the Oppenheimer Global Multi-Asset Growth Fund.

As explained by Oppenheimer, the fund invests across asset classes to efficiently provide risk-adjusted growth while mitigating downside risk and volatility. The fund is led by Mark Hamilton, chief investment officer in charge of asset allocation, and portfolio managers Dokyoung Lee, Alessio de Longis and Benjamin Rockmuller.

The fund is part of a series of four multi-asset portfolios aimed at addressing the typical investment objectives voiced by investors and their advisers, which include growth, income, diversification and inflation protection.

In seeking to deliver on client investing objectives, the new growth fund will “combine multiple perspectives—macro, valuation and risk—to develop a robust view of opportunities and risks across asset classes,” the firm says.