Lincoln Enhances Investment Choice for Small Retirement Plans

The new lineups are designed to provide small market plan sponsors and their advisers with more flexibility in both fund and lineup selection. They are also meant to help small market plan sponsors meet their fiduciary responsibilities while offering workers a valuable retirement plan benefit. The Ibbotson Insight Series now offers three preset lineups and, for plans looking to select their own funds, more than twice as many investment options.

The investment lineups address the individual investment preferences of participants based on an employer’s workforce demographics and can also include target-date and qualified deferred investment alternative (QDIA) investment options.

The three enhanced fund lineups vary by complexity and investment preference and are distinguished by the number of investment options, percentage of equity options, number of alternative strategies and investment mandates. Participant profiles are used to help plan sponsors and advisers determine the investment lineup that best matches the organization’s workforce characteristics, including financial literacy, investment experience, sponsor-driven education efforts, participant engagement, time horizon and investment preferences.

The types of investment approaches now available through the Lincoln Director program include:

• Workforce – An option constructed of three investment lineups—Ibbotson Fundamental, Ibbotson Standard and Ibbotson Extended—that includes a predetermined set of investment options based on workforce profile characteristics. The approach is designed to meet the needs of varying employee populations while offering 3(21) or 3(38) fiduciary services for the plan sponsor.

• Choice – An option that allows the plan sponsor and adviser to select investment options from predetermined asset categories defined by Ibbotson. This lineup closely models the Workforce lineup, but allows the plan sponsor additional flexibility to select specific funds while still receiving fiduciary services.

• Custom – These lineups are available for plan sponsors who would like to select their own investment options from the full investment universe without any limitations. Ibbotson fiduciary services are not available with this lineup.

The Ibbotson Insight Series provides investment options that span asset classes and style categories to help give participants an effective balance between risk and return, as well as an opportunity to develop long-term strategies for savings.

“The enhancements in the Lincoln Director program help small market plan sponsors meet their fiduciary responsibilities and better prepare their plan participants for retirement,” says Michael Conte, the firm’s small market business leader for product and solutions management. “The new workforce approaches provide our sponsors with an offering that can be customized to fit the needs of any plan demographic, and will continue to provide the same level of expertise and service they have come to know from Lincoln.”

More information about the Lincoln Director program is at www.LincolnFinancial.com.