Products March 9, 2017

New Wellness Platform From Merit Financial Group

The platform's services can be offered both directly to retirement plan sponsors, “or act as smoothly integrated, third party resources that augment the offerings of retirement plan advisers.”

Reported by

Registered investment advisory (RIA) firm Merit Financial Group announced the launch of its Worksite Financial Wellness platform, described as “a comprehensive offering that provides customized, turnkey financial wellness education, coaching and training resources to company retirement plan participants. “

Merit Financial Group is affiliated with Merit Financial Advisors, a regional independent Office of Supervisory Jurisdiction firm, “frequently referred to within the retail financial advice space as a “Super-OSJ.”

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Rick Kent, president and founder of Merit Financial Group, suggests the wellness program “can add enormous value for everybody with a role in the retirement plan process, especially the plan participants. Plan sponsors, plan advisers, benefits consultants and other professionals supporting retirement plans are increasingly bandwidth-constrained by the sheer complexity of running retirement plans today.  They are actively seeking a partner who can work flexibly with plan sponsors or their service providers to provide, on a turnkey basis, the financial wellness education and coaching that plan participants increasingly demand and need.”

According to the firm, the newly launched Worksite Financial Wellness platform “enables retirement plan sponsors to bolster the financial health and retirement readiness of its individual plan participants, reduce personal finance-related stress that can negatively impact employee productivity, such as excessive personal debt, and to serve as fiduciaries to plan participants by helping employees better understand plan offerings.”

The platform’s services can be offered both directly to retirement plan sponsors, “or act as smoothly integrated, third party resources that augment the offerings of retirement plan advisers, third party employee benefits consultancies, retirement plan record-keepers as well as other third party service providers that focus on the company retirement plan space.”

For more information on the platform’s capabilities, visit www.meritfa.com. 

Investing March 8, 2017

Vanguard's TDF Market Share Rose to 34% in 2016

The investment firm took in more TDF assets than any other company: $96 billion.
Reported by

Vanguard grew assets in its target-date funds (TDFs) and collective investment trusts (CITs) by $96 billion in 2016, according to Sway Research’s report, “The State of the Target-Date Market: 2017.” Assets in Vanguard’s target-date portfolios reached $449.8 billion at the end of 2016, a whopping 27% increase from the year before, to give Vanguard a 34% share of the $1.3 trillion target-date market.

For all investment managers, assets in target-date portfolios expanded by 20% last year, from $1.11 trillion at the end of 2015 to $1.33 by year-end 2016. CIT target-date assets grew by 29%, from $355 billion to $458 billion, while TDF mutual fund assets grew by only half as much, 16%, from $760 billion to $878 billion.

Sway Research believes that Vanguard’s TDF products benefited from a growing demand for passively managed products. Assets in passively managed target-date portfolios, at $653 billion, now outpace actively managed target-date portfolios, which now stand at $594 billion; hybrid target-date products can claim $89 billion in assets.

“Vanguard was not the only fund company to expand its target-date asset base by $10 billion or more in 2016,” Sway says. “T. Rowe Price increased target-date assets by $24 billion in 2016—the most of any firm with a focus on actively managed target-dates. T. Rowe was followed by Black Rock, which added $16 billion of target-date assets.”

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In terms of the largest growth by percentage, American Funds’ target-date portfolios took first prize, expanding by 40%, or $14 billion. As noted above, Vanguard’s assets in these products grew by 27%. The third-biggest growth in terms of percentage was BlackRock (18%), T. Rowe Price (15%) and Fidelity Investments (8%).

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