Investment Product and Service Launches

Art by Jackson Epstein

Northern Trust Partners With Two Sigma

Northern Trust has entered into a strategic agreement with Two Sigma to offer Venn, a cloud-based investment analytics platform, to its clients. Venn by Two Sigma will help Northern Trust provide asset allocators with portfolio insights and analytics designed to help investment teams make more confident asset allocation, manager selection and quantitatively driven investment decisions. 

Through this strategic relationship, Northern Trust clients can gain access to Venn to take advantage of advanced portfolio analytics tools. Northern Trust has enabled certain data flows through the Venn platform via application programming interfaces (APIs), allowing clients to benefit from the integration with both Northern Trust’s Front Office Solutions and Investment Risk and Analytical Services offerings.

“Our Whole Office ecosystem delivers global asset allocators and asset managers scale, efficiency, flexibility and optionality, ultimately enabling more informed investment decision making,” says Pete Cherecwich, president of corporate and institutional services at Northern Trust. “Northern Trust is committed to providing additive value to our asset allocator clients. Two Sigma’s Venn is highly regarded within the industry. We believe that the combined expertise and synergies across our two organizations will improve operational efficiency and analytical capabilities for our mutual clients.”

Two Sigma’s Venn helps investment teams better understand investment risks and opportunities across a diversified multi-asset portfolio, delivered through modern, cloud-based software.

“Venn is designed to help investors better understand and manage their risks in ways they could not before,” says Jake Dwyer, general manager of Venn by Two Sigma. “We are excited to expand our relationship with Northern Trust, bringing Venn’s capabilities to a broader group of sophisticated asset allocator clients.”

Lockton and Morningstar Team Up to Offer Adviser Managed Accounts

Lockton Investment Advisors LLC has teamed with Morningstar Investment Management LLC to provide adviser managed account services. 

“In the rapidly evolving retirement space, our clients continue to lean on Lockton as a consultative advisory leader,” says Pam Popp, president of Lockton’s retirement practice. “The growing demand for personalized support to help multi-career workers reach financial security spurred our innovation and relationship with Morningstar Investment Management. We’re proud to offer a customizable retirement service that is designed to help participants and meet employer goals.”

Lockton’s new service, FinanceGPS Managed Accounts, provides an alternative to target-date funds (TDFs), expanding the investment focus beyond the employee’s projected retirement date. The service creates personalized portfolios that integrate additional data, including the employee’s location, savings rate, gender, outside assets and long-term goals. Additionally, employees can receive personalized savings rate advice and guidance to set an income strategy during retirement.

”Morningstar Investment Management’s expertise, technology and focus on helping participants meet their retirement goals is impressive,” says Tom Simonson, a senior Lockton retirement adviser. “Helping employees achieve their retirement goals is paramount to our role as advisers and teaming with Morningstar Investment Management will allow us to expand on that commitment. FinanceGPS Managed Accounts enables our clients to offer their employees an advice alternative supported by the same fiduciary rigor used for the plan itself.”

Initial clients are expected to be live on the new platform in June.

Firms Launch TDFs With Guaranteed Income

American Century Investments, Lincoln Financial Group, Nationwide, Prime Capital Investment Advisors, SS&C Technologies, Wilmington Trust and Wilshire have launched a new in-plan target-date series with guaranteed income for life.

Called “Income America 5ForLife,” this new solution, which is designed to be used as a plan’s qualified default investment alternative (QDIA), strives to address the need for guaranteed monthly retirement income.

“Working together with our retirement industry partners, we developed the ‘Income America’ consortium to offer a defined contribution [DC] solution that helps plan participants concerned about outliving the money they’ve set aside for retirement,” says American Century Investments President and Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Thomas. “Our recent 2020 Retirement Plan Participant study indicates that more than 80% of participants would keep their assets in their retirement plan if they had an income option. We believe Income America provides an innovative approach to helping more people achieve a successful and comfortable retirement.”

Income America is a series of portfolios built on a target-date glide path designed by American Century and held in a portable, non-proprietary, multi-manager collective investment trust (CIT). It is available as both a traditional series of target-date portfolios, called Income America, and as a companion series of target-date portfolios with an in-plan guaranteed lifetime withdrawal benefit (GLWB), known as Income America 5ForLife. Either series can be used as a plan’s QDIA.

“By partnering on this important new solution, we look forward to continuing to help retirement plan participants not just understand how to save for the retirement they envision but help them take those savings and translate them into a monthly check that will last through retirement,” says Jamie Ohl, executive vice president, president, workplace solutions, head of life and annuity operations, Lincoln Financial Group. “As more Americans rely on their workplace retirement plan as their primary savings vehicle, it is more important than ever that we focus on the outcomes that will help them build financial security—because in planning for retirement, the ultimate outcome is income.”