Popping the Hood III Now Available

The report is the only independent analysis of target date funds at the fund family level and provides in-depth analysis of 38 target date fund families.

Each report contains four pages of data on each of the fund families, including: 

• Fund family scores, assigned by Target Date Analytics LLC;
• Major asset allocation, by individual fund;
• Expense ratios, overall and by individual fund;
• performance attribution, against an internal index, vs. peer group;
• three-year equity allocation and returns vs. index and peers;
• Worst three-month returns vs. index and peers;
• three -year risk and reward, vs. index; and
• Organizational and profile information.

Charlie Ruffel, CEO of PLANSPONSOR noted that while it is relatively easy to compare funds to other funds, this report is the only available tool to compare target date fund families.  “‘Popping the Hood III’ provides even greater in-depth analysis of target date fund families than its predecessor reports, as well as new target date benchmarks,” Ruffel said.

“There can be huge differences in the way target date funds progress as the investor nears retirement age,” noted Joseph Nagengast, principal of Target Date Analytics. “Our report shows how the various target date fund families differ, not only in their glidepaths, but also their fee structures, management, risk and investment performance—relative to their peers and to our proprietary benchmarks.”

The report can be accessed at http://www.plansponsorresearch.com/targetdate/ .