By Randy Myers
Stable value providers have a tricky story to tell. Their product is reliable by design—stable, not flashy, a little “dad car,” if you will. But it’s also heavy on contracts, accounting, equity-wash rules, corridor provisions, and other esoterica that can make a listener’s eyes glaze over. At the 2025 SVIA Fall Forum, Planet Money co-host Kenny Malone—whose job it is to demystify complex financial topics—offered advice for telling stable value’s story with tools borrowed from narrative journalism: metaphors, tangibles, origin stories, and (sparingly) the absurd. He even showed how “merch” can help connect with an audience. His goal is to help stable value practitioners explain their product in ways that stick—whether with plan sponsors, consultants, advisors, or participants.
The session began with a reality check: when asked at cocktail parties what they do, even veteran stable value leaders default to “I work in retirement” or slip into “accounting methodology” and lose the room. An audience of retirement plan sponsors or participants will be ready for more details than that, but they still need a story they can understand and relate to. Malone’s advice:
Lean on metaphors. Metaphors can do some of the heavy lifting when concepts are complex. In talking with SVIA members, Malone found two that resonated. First, the dad car: stable value as a midsize sedan or fuel-efficient SUV—not flashy, it just works. Practitioners are the mechanics under the hood, meanwhile, tuning the product’s various components so the driver never notices how it all happens. The metaphor is relatable, self-effacing, and honors the engineering behind stable value’s smooth ride.
For plan sponsors and consultants, the car and mechanic metaphor validates the careful attention to detail they care about.
Second, a duck gliding on water. Above the surface: calm, steady progress. Below it: furious paddling by wrap providers, asset managers, and recordkeepers who ensure stable value delivers on its promise of capital preservation and steady, predictable returns.
For participants, the duck captures safety without saying “boring” and the dad car evokes reliability and stability.
Make it tangible. Abstraction loses audiences. In the stable value world, the contract—which spells out how a stable value fund will be operated and managed—is a tangible thing newcomers can lean into when being introduced to the product. Teaching stable value by walking through an actual contract—explaining what plan sponsors can do, what participants can do, how often interest is credited, and how practical rules like the 90-day equity wash work—can turn the invisible into the visible. It also naturally surfaces trade-offs and responsibilities embedded in stable value.
Tell origin stories—of products and people. People tend to remember stories about how things began. Malone highlighted a personal origin story shared by an SVIA member that many in the organization could relate to: entering the stable value business with little prior exposure, living through the 2008–2009 financial crisis, and watching stable value prove its worth during that tumultuous period. That kind of story humanizes the product and places it in time.
For plan sponsors and advisors, origin stories can explain why stable value exists (what problem it solved), how it has evolved, and when it shines.
Use absurdity—lightly—to get attention. Malone’s team sometimes embraces the absurd—a dating-show sketch where “Stocks” and “Bonds” pitch an investor—to make dry ideas memorable. For stable value, Malone and his SVIA audience imagined a character who’s “less exciting and more stable than bonds” who you could bring home to meet your mom and your grandparents—someone who would “rather stay home with grandparents and play backgammon” than go out. The analogy is funny because it’s true—and because it brings alive the contrast between stable value and more volatile investments.
Use merch (really) as a medium for delivering a message. In classic Planet Money fashion, Malone pushed the idea that physical things can reinforce ideas. He shared with his audience product samples he had made for them that could help newcomers relate to stable value and remember why it’s valuable. The merch included, among other things, a miniature SVIA-inscribed ship anchor (stable value can anchor a portfolio) and a toy duck with paddling feet. Silly, perhaps, but memorable representations of stable value’s core attributes.
The crucial point Malone made—through his jokes, video clips, advice, and some handcrafted swag—is that storytelling can be an on-ramp to understanding. A better story doesn’t change what stable value is, but it can make a difference in how well people grasp its fundamentals and ultimately help drive them to adopt it.