Hot off the Presses
Participant and Sponsor Tools
New York Life Retirement Plan Services enhanced its client access website for plan sponsors by upgrading participation and contribution dashboards. Enroll and Roll-in, one new dashboard, displays participation rates and average account balances alongside comparisons with industry peers and plans on New York Life Retirement Plan Services’ platform.
ERISAdiagnostics Inc. created a Section 404(a)(5) Participant Disclosure Checklist that outlines plan and investment information that must be provided to Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) defined contribution (DC) plan participants, with items required for new participant disclosures, as well as annual and quarterly disclosures.
Wells Fargo Retirement enhanced its service that measures the effectiveness of employer-sponsored retirement plans, providing a way for sponsors to compare their plans with those of other companies similar in industry, size, employee demographics and design. The information helps measure plan competitiveness and effectiveness relative to industry peers.
Plan for Life, Fidelity Investments’ retirement planning solution, offers participants access to: phone representatives to help personally guide them through complex benefits decisions; workplace education, including onsite retirement planning consultations; on-the-spot enrollment via mobile tablets; and a tool to help illustrate potential retirement income.
Benefit Plans Administrative Services Inc. released MyPlanLoan Continuation Program to help terminated employees continue repaying loans after separation from service under the original terms, thereby avoiding the tax penalties of a default.
J.P. Morgan Asset Management debuted a tool to help plan sponsors and advisers visualize the impact of a re-enrollment into target-date funds (TDFs). Using data such as average salary, average savings rate, number of participants and asset allocation for the plan’s investments, the Re-enrollment Analyzer calculates the projected impact of improved asset allocation on a plan’s average income replacement rate.
The Plan Sponsor University, a collaboration between Retirement Advisor University and UCLA Anderson School of Management Executive Education, was formed to educate and train employers to increase their expertise in retirement plan design and operation, fiduciary obligations and participant outcomes.
SunGard upgraded its Omni Web Solution for defined contribution (DC) and defined benefit (DB) plan participants and plan sponsors. Participants can access account information and transactions online, and sponsors can differentiate their services with expanded integration, messaging, reporting, configuration and processing capabilities.
To assist plan sponsors with 408(b)(2) compliance, Castle Rock Investment Co. rolled out the Fee Disclosure Review Service, which includes a review of the 408(b)(2) disclosures from the covered service providers to the responsible plan fiduciaries for completeness; written certification of the results; a fee benchmarking report to help determine reasonableness of plan costs; and a consultation to review documentation.
Adviser Tools
RIA [Registered Investment Adviser] in a Box rolled out a registration maintenance service for compliant document management, giving advisers a tool for ongoing registration document management.
Financial services provider Securian enhanced its Book of Business tool to allow advisers to see their Securian accounts in the aggregate, from a number of angles, in order to see marketing opportunities.
The Opportunity to Articulate Your Value was designed by ING IM to help advisers with fee transparency and the justification demands of fee disclosure regulations. The program’s features include: plan sponsor research; best practices from industry analysis; step-by-step guidance on packaging existing services into value propositions and service commitments; and tips on matching advisory services to changing client needs.
Videos, articles and infographics on the Advisor Tech Tips blog from Putnam Investments can help advisers navigate current technology—including applications, mobile devices and social media—to better understand, adapt and leverage these resources for practice-building. The site address is www.advisortechtips.com.
Trinity Pension Consultants’ Cash Balance Navigator enables advisers to generate a maximum annual contribution amount by inputting a client’s age and income. The application is available by searching for CB Navigator in the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store.
AmericanFunds rolled out a multifund version of its Recordkeeper Direct tool, with more than 80 investment choices from 20-plus investment managers. The multifund version is a tool for the $1 million to $20 million market, with recordkeeping fees based on a fee of $2,500 per plan and $50 per participant.
The 401K Coach released the Fiduciary Advisor’s Rollover Toolkit to provide a solution and formal process for offering rollover individual retirement account (IRA) services. The toolkit contains a white paper, procedural checklist and other supporting documents for advisers to successfully provide rollover services.
Investments
Dimensional Managed DC [Defined Contribution], an alternative to target-date funds (TDFs), has been rolled out on a platform by ASPire Financial Services LLC and OBS Financial Services Inc.
Schwab added to its Mutual Fund OneSource Select List the Value Line Asset Allocation Fund, which can shift assets back and forth among stocks, bonds and cash to seek better opportunities or manage risk, as market conditions warrant.
Russell Investments introduced the Russell Multi-Strategy Alternative Fund and the Russell U.S. Strategic Equity Fund, which both seek to provide long-term capital growth.
ING U.S. Investment Management introduced a customizable liability-driven investing (LDI) collective trust to assist plan sponsors with matching assets to future benefit payments. The collective trust’s long corporate bond exposure can more closely match pension liabilities than generic, long-duration strategies that typically combine corporate and government bonds or use only the latter.
Two new strategic income funds, one conservative and the other more aggressive, from Manning & Napier offer income through investments in equities, fixed income and real estate.
Subadvised by Nationwide Asset Management, the Inflation-Protected Securities Fund aims to offer inflation protection as well as liquidity and a low-risk option. The fund will also be available to the portfolio managers of the Nationwide Target Destination Funds, Nationwide’s family of target-date funds (TDFs).
RetireEase Choice, a flexible premium deferred-income annuity from MassMutual, was designed to guarantee a future income stream. Unlike traditional deferred annuities, it guarantees a specific amount of future income at the time a purchase payment is made, since assets within the contract are dedicated to meeting long-term retirement income needs.