Highlights from AARP’s “Boomers and the Great Recession: Struggling to Recover”
A recent AARP report focuses on the major challenges that baby boomers, those aged 50 and older, face from the Great Recession. As the title portends “Boomers and the Great Recession: Struggling to Recover,” the report documents how boomers were affected and coped with the challenges of the market meltdown in 2007 and the subsequent Great Recession, which they say ended in October of […]
Stable Times Volume 16 Issue 2
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Apples to Apples
Participant fee disclosure rules published by the Department of Labor (DOL) went into effect in 2012, presenting new reporting challenges for the defined contribution industry, including stable value. The key purpose of the new disclosure is to achieve greater transparency and more meaningful comparisons of investment options in participant-directed retirement plans. This article highlights some of the key investment-related disclosures required by the Employee […]
The Fiscal Cliff: Where Politics and Economics Meet
Maybe we haven’t seen anything yet. Sure, Washington has been filled with partisan bickering for the past few years, but as the republic prepares to sail over a fiscal cliff it seems likely that the debate and rhetoric in our nation’s capital will be characterized by a heightened sense of urgency and increased vitriol. “There’s always a chance that we […]
DOL Continues to Refine ERISA Rules and Regulations
The Department of Labor has issued many new rules governing retirement plans over the past few years, but its work is hardly done, Michael Davis, Deputy Assistant Secretary for the department’s Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), told participants at the 2012 SVIA Fall Forum. Davis recited a list of his agency’s recent rulemaking accomplishments, including issuing proposed regulations that would require additional disclosures about […]
Stable Value and the Small-Plan Market
Stable value funds continue to play an important role in smaller defined contribution plans, and industry insiders suggest there’s little reason to believe that won’t continue to be the case going forward. Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs is among the segment’s champions. When it decided to acquire stable value money manager Dwight Asset Management earlier this year, says David Solomon, head of defined […]
The Impact of Managed Accounts on Stable Value Funds
Stable value funds have long appealed to participants in defined contribution plans, and currently account for about 14 percent of the total assets held in those plans. Now, however, some participants are delegating responsibility for choosing their investments to outside advisors via so-called “managed accounts” programs. While it’s not clear how that might impact allocations to stable value funds over the long term, early […]
Retirement Readiness: A Global Challenge
The U.S. isn’t alone in facing a retirement readiness challenge. European countries are staring at many of the same problems: an aging population marked by a tidal wave of Baby Boomers in or approaching retirement, and fewer workers coming along behind them to support old-age entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare in the US. The citizenry in those countries are […]
Meeting the Challenges of a Low Interest-Rate Environment
When it comes to interest-rate risk, the focus for the stable value industry has always been on rates rising steeply or suddenly, which would be a major change from today’s sustained low rate world. The issue for stable value is whether retirement plan participants would flee the asset class in favor of money market funds, where returns to investors tend to immediately follow in […]
