Products April 28, 2014

BlackRock Enhances CoRI Retirement Suite

April 28, 2014 (PLANSPONSOR.com) – BlackRock, Inc. has expanded its proprietary CoRI retirement suite with new income projection and portfolio allocation analysis tools.
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This expansion enhances the CoRI online portal with a new feature that helps pre-retirees identify savings and investment strategies that can help them plan for income goals in retirement. The firm says the new functionality should allow the CoRI suite to help investors understand and take action to address the critical relationship between accumulated savings and lifetime income in retirement.

The CoRI suite includes the following features:

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  • Access to the BlackRock CoRI Retirement Indexes (the “CoRI Indexes”), which track the expected median cost of lifetime income for individuals turning 65 in the year referenced in the respective index names;
  • Access to the BlackRock CoRI Funds (the “CoRI Funds”), which are mutual funds that use the CoRI Indexes as their investment benchmark (see “BlackRock Unveils CoRI Funds”); and
  • The expanded CoRI tool, which delivers a clear and intuitive “translation” between retirement savings and estimated annual retirement income, and with the new enhancements, illustrates how sample investment portfolios with varying allocations can help an investor plan for their retirement income goal.

“The CoRI approach addresses the crucial issue at the heart of the retirement challenge, saving enough in your working years to get the income you want in retirement,” says Chip Castille, head of BlackRock’s U.S. Retirement Group, based in New York. “CoRI gives pre-retirees unique insight into the savings-to-income translation, plus the tools to put that insight to work.”

Castille adds that a saver can use the appropriate CoRI Index to estimate how much his or her current savings may generate in annual lifetime income when he or she turns 65 or, conversely, how much he or she would need to have currently saved to reach a certain level of annual retirement income upon turning 65.

After obtaining an estimate of how much their current savings may generate or how much they would need to save, investors can use the enhanced CoRI tool to examine a range of sample portfolios based on publicly available indexes as proxies for asset classes. Investors can consider how conservative, moderate and CoRI Index portfolios may affect their retirement income plan, as well as how much or how little additional annual savings may be needed based on the retirement income a participant wants. The CoRI tool can also help investors see how adding portfolio exposure to the CoRI Indexes may help them progress toward their retirement goals with greater efficiency.

More information is available at http://www.BlackRock.com/CoRI.

BlackRock is a provider of investment management, risk management and advisory services for institutional and retail clients worldwide.

Products April 28, 2014

TSA Consulting Acquires 403(b) Solutions Program

April 28, 2014 (PLANSPONSOR.com) – TSA Consulting Group, Inc., a provider of 403(b) and 457(b) retirement plan administration services, has acquired Security Financial Resources, Inc.’s 403(b) Plan Solutions Program.
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Under the terms of an all-cash purchase agreement, TSA Consulting Group acquired the 403(b) Plan Solutions Program effective April 10. The deal adds more than 2,000 public school districts and colleges in 47 states to TSA’s comprehensive Compliance Edge program.

TSA Consulting Group provides retirement plan administration services to public education employers, with deliverables such as plan documents, employer and participant services and recordkeeping, as well as tailored employee communications components and web-based transaction and remittance processing. “Our continued commitment to this market is evidenced by the number of long-term clients that continue to place their trust in our services,” says Joe Rollins, president and CEO of TSA Consulting Group, based in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.

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The company’s clients include large school districts in the United States and represent over one million employees. “We are excited about this opportunity and confident in our systems and capacity to deliver truly independent plan administration services to a greater number of public education employees,” says Steve Banks, TSA Consulting’s chief operations officer.

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