Stable Value Trends: Steady Performance, Careful Risk Management
Representatives of stable value managers and wrap providers shared similar stories during the panel presentation—stories about how they’re working to ensure that stable value continues to deliver what it promises for the millions of retirement plan participants who invest in the asset class. And stories about how they’re succeeding.
Artificial Intelligence: Applications for the Stable Value Industry
The stable value industry is built on a foundation of contracts: guaranteed investment contracts, contract value wrap contracts, and group annuity general and separate account contracts. For anyone employed in the industry, those contracts make for a lot of reading. They also make a lot of work for lawyers. But soon, drafting, reading, and interpreting stable value contracts could become much faster and easier thanks to advances in artificial intelligence.
Experts See Continued Pressure—and Some Opportunity—in Commercial Real Estate
The commercial real estate market remains under pressure but isn’t without opportunity for stable value managers, say four industry experts who spoke at the 2023 SVIA Fall Forum.
Plan Sponsors Affirm Vital Role for Stable Value in Retirement Plans
The Federal Reserve’s battle against inflation has sent short-term interest rates soaring faster than stable value crediting rates. But many plan sponsors continue to see stable value as the best long-term capital-preservation investment option for defined contribution retirement plans.
Exploring a New Frontier: Multi-Asset Stable Value
Stable value funds invest predominantly in short- to medium-term fixed income securities. Now, researchers at Vanguard Group are looking into whether a stable value fund invested in a mix of stocks and bonds, and incorporated into a target-date fund, might offer advantages to target-date investors.
Legislative Update: SECURE 2.0 Rollout Going Well
SECURE 2.0, the retirement savings legislation that passed in December 2022, includes more than 90 provisions designed to make it easier for employers to offer retirement plans and improve retirement outcomes for American workers. At the 2023 SVIA Fall Forum, senior staff members from Capitol Hill said rollout of the legislation is going well despite its complexity.
The 2024 Election: What It Means to be America
Presidential elections are expected to turn on policy—how the candidates will govern on key issues like taxes and foreign policy. Next year’s presidential election, says Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Samuels, is different—a referendum on which values define us as a country. Put another way, he said, it is a referendum on what it means to be America.
Analyst Sees GDP Slowing—But Not Sliding into a Recession
The U.S. economy is humming for the moment but may be headed for a slowdown. Economic futurist Andrew Busch predicts that the third quarter of this year will prove to have been a peak period of growth, one that will be followed by slower growth through the fourth quarter of 2024. But he counters that the economy isn’t likely to sink into a recession, at least in the near term.
The Case of the Dwindling Cash Flows
Many stable value funds are shrinking, but the principal reason, it turns out, is not because retirement plan participants are withdrawing money from them. Rather, exchanges of money into stable value funds from other asset classes have slowed.
