Retirement investment is crucial for anyone who wants to secure their financial future. It is important to have funds set aside to support their lifestyle. Investing in retirement accounts, such as a 401(k) or IRA, allows individuals to take advantage of compound interest and grow their savings over time. By starting early and consistently contributing to retirement accounts, you can ensure you’ll have a comfortable retirement without having to rely solely on Social Security benefits or other sources of income.
What Makes Pensions Unique
The fundamental purpose of retirement plans is to provide participants with a means of living beyond their working years. A client’s investment strategy must support the company’s overall benefit strategy. Management and trustees should accept investment risks appropriate for their situation.
DB Assets
Defined Benefit assets are held in trust to support the ongoing benefit payments of the plan’s participants Asset growth dependent on underlying asset allocation and plan sponsor’s willingness and ability to contribute to the plan.
Risk tolerance driven by many factors including but not limited to the following: sponsor health, funding status, liability accrual, demographics, benefit type, etc.
Impact on Investment Strategy
Although plans are subject to regulation by ERISA, IRS and the Department of Labor, asset allocations are not constrained by regulatory bodies.
However, accounting for the liability can have adverse impacts on the plan sponsor’s financials and thus will have material implications on asset allocation decisions.
Cardinal’s Approach
Robust modeling integrating key plan and benefit factors coupled with multi-factor term structure model simulating range of actuarial and capital market environments and resulting impact on pension metrics.
Insurance Assets
Dependent on plan participant demographics and underlying benefit plan type, but generally longer time horizon exceeding 10 years or more.
Impact on Investment Strategy
Ongoing liquidity is generally needed to support monthly benefit payments and other recurring pension expense.
Cardinal’s Approach
LDI Dashboard measures and monitors ongoing liquidity needs recognizing the importance of cash flow matching.
Insurance Assets
Total return vs liability driven investing.
Impact on Investment Strategy
Maximizing economic surplus by generally allocating larger percentage of portfolio to risk seeking asset classes as opposed to minimizing tracking error by allocating to asset classes that more closely correlate with the liability.
Cardinal’s Approach
Quantify impact on funded status, required contributions and other pension metrics highlighting which approach better aligns with plan objectives.
DC Assets
Defined Contribution assets are individual accounts providing tax-deferred growth to support the participant’s retirement needs.
Asset mix and growth are driven by the plan’s design and by participant choices.
Longevity risk is borne by the participant.
Impact on Investment Strategy
Although plans are subject to regulation by ERISA, IRS and the Department of Labor, asset allocations are not constrained by regulatory bodies.
The plan sponsor bears fiduciary risk to provide prudent plan design features and investment options.
Cardinal’s Approach
Help plan sponsors discharge their fiduciary responsibility with robust analysis across key DC plan components – Plan Structure, Plan Administrator, and Investment Lineup.
Insurance Assets
Dependent on plan status and demographics but generally long-term horizon of 10 years or beyond.
Impact on Investment Strategy
Efforts must focus on improving outcomes across participants, who may use the plan for decades.
Cardinal’s Approach
Identify, measure and develop strategies to improve participant outcomes in participation, savings, etc.
Regular net-of-fees performance reporting to identify any issues early and provide a recommended course of action to mitigate sponsor risk.
Insurance Assets
Produce plan with compelling design features that attracts and retains talent.
Provide investment options to a diverse participant population.
Impact on Investment Strategy
Any strategy to improve plan outcomes must consider participant behavior in addition to purely financial considerations in plan and investment lineup design.
Cardinal’s Approach
Robust analysis across multiple dimensions to produce lineup with appropriate coverage along the capital market line.
Include options that address needs of both hands-on and hands-off participants.