Marketplace Realities: Opportunities for Stable Value
Addressing the SVIA’s annual Fall Forum 2012 in Washington, D.C., Eric Levy, senior vice president, Product Solutions Management for Lincoln Financial Group, declared that for many retirement plan participants, the investment landscape now appears dramatically more risky than it did five years ago. Following the stock market crash that began in 2007, he noted, nearly a third of the participants in defined contribution plans who […]
SVIA Quarterly Survey in Stable Times
SVIA’s Quarterly Characteristics Survey demonstrates the virtues of stable value: consistent positive returns, principal preservation as well as having the lowest correlation to stocks as compared to other investments, which means stable value can act as a diversifier. For the third quarter of 2012, stable value fund assets included in the survey were $445 billion, […]
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 […]
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 […]
Portrait of a Plan Participant
In the wake of recent regulations, plan participants are soon to be provided with more information than ever regarding their defined contribution plans. In the lead up to fee compliance, issues such as getting the information out to participants and ensuring that they know how to access it have been considered. However, the matter of what plan participants will do with the fee […]
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 […]
Finding Retirement Security
Stable value is in a new stage of growth and stability. At the height of the financial crisis in the last quarter of 2008, stable value funds held about $347 billion of the assets in defined contribution plans. That number rose to $423 billion by the end of 2009 or 22 percent as investors sought out less volatile investment options. By the […]
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 […]
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 […]