Investment Product and Service Launches

Nuveen collaborates with Morningstar to offer TIAA annuity; Savvy Wealth announces proprietary investment management program; Max Life launches Smart Wealth Annuity Guaranteed Pension Plan; and more.

Nuveen Collaborates with Morningstar Retirement to Offer TIAA Secure Income Account

Nuveen, the investment manager of TIAA, announced that the TIAA Secure Income Account is now available to the defined contribution investment only market through the Morningstar Retirement Manager platform.

Designed to be used within a managed accounts program (traditional managed accounts and adviser-managed accounts) or a custom target-date model portfolio, the TIAA SIA is a deferred fixed annuity that helps protect and grow a portion of a participant’s retirement savings over time.

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Through this offering, advisers and plan sponsors can utilize Morningstar Retirement’s services to offer their participants a personalized in-plan lifetime income solution and help determine what the right amount of their retirement savings to allocate to the TIAA SIA might be. This service is available only to individuals whose retirement plans offer both Morningstar Retirement Manager and the TIAA SIA.

In addition to accessing TIAA’s guaranteed income offering through a personalized managed account, the TIAA SIA is also embedded within the Nuveen Lifecycle Income CIT Series, a collective investment trust target-date solution that offers participants the option of converting a portfolio of their holdings into guaranteed income at retirement.

Savvy Wealth Enhances Adviser Platform With Proprietary Investment Management Program

Savvy Wealth announced the launch of Savvy Wealth Investment Management. An in-house investment management solution with diversified and low-cost investment strategies, SWIM enables the creation and management of personalized investment portfolios tailored to the firm’s high-net-worth client base.

SWIM offers a number of benefits to advisers, including:

  • Portfolio management: Portfolios are managed by Savvy’s investment team, which oversees active asset allocation, timely rebalancing, tax-loss harvesting and cash management;
  • Access to proprietary models: Advisers can offer quantitative, low-cost models. These proprietary models, which can be built around legacy positions, include customizations around factor tilts and tax-efficiency; and
  • Comprehensive portfolio solutions: SWIM enables advisers to diversify portfolios around illiquid securities, private investments, custom indexes, separately managed accounts and held-away retirement accounts.

“Our firm was founded on the vision of strengthening human advice, giving advisers more time to spend working with clients and scaling their business,” Ritik Malhotra, co-founder and CEO of Savvy Wealth, said in a statement. “Introducing Savvy Wealth Investment Management equips advisors with sophisticated investment tools to help maximize client outcomes, complemented by internal portfolio management support and solutions to help enrich the client experience.”

Max Life Launches Smart Wealth Annuity Guaranteed Pension Plan

Max Life Insurance Co. Ltd. has launched Smart Wealth Annuity Guaranteed Pension Plan, a non-linked, non-participating individual/group general annuity savings plan.

The SWAG Pension Plan offers lifetime income aligned with customers’ lifestyles. They can tailor their policies, choosing from a variety of annuity options and return-of-premium options. The key features of SWAG Pension Plan include:

  • Range of annuity variants;
  • Immediate annuity with flexibility to decide return of chosen proportion of premiums paid to the surviving annuitant or nominee;
  • Choice to increase annuity up to 6% per annum, ensuring readiness for the rising inflation;
  • Early return of premium on attaining milestone age, which varies from 70 years to 85 years (in blocks of 5 years);
  • Option to surviving annuitant to withdraw chosen proportion of annuity in advance on death of first annuitant; and
  • Option to plan early and get higher annuity on retirement by deferring first annuity from the first month itself up to 12 years.

“Through its customizable features and distinctive variants, this plan empowers individuals to proactively shape their retirement journey,” said Prashant Tripathy, Max Life’s managing director and CEO, in a statement.

Anchorage Digital and Onramp Invest Partner to Offer Crypto for Financial Advisers

Anchorage Digital and Onramp Invest announced their offering of digital asset block trading for financial advisers. The offering combines Anchorage Digital’s solution for cryptocurrency block trading with Onramp’s alternatives access tools. The partnership provides secure access to digital assets through Anchorage Digital Bank.

“As the only OCC-chartered digital asset bank, Anchorage Digital Bank provides the security and regulatory profile RIAs need to access the digital asset economy in a safe and compliant manner,” said Nathan McCauley, Anchorage Digital Bank’s CEO, in a statement. “We are proud to work with industry leaders like Onramp to unlock a future where crypto can be part of every portfolio.”

The new feature is available to financial advisers using Onramp, which serves a community of registered investment advisers representing more than $40 billion in cumulative AUM.

“Block trading lets RIAs execute multiple trades across their entire book of clients as a single institutional order,” said Eric Ervin, founder and CEO of Onramp Invest, in a statement. “This service maximizes efficiency, minimizes cost and offers equitable execution for all clients. This is a big deal, which is the reason, besides strong security and regulatory standards, that we selected Anchorage Digital Bank.”

New PEP Made Available by Ascensus, American Funds

The pooled employer plan is live from one of the country’s biggest PEP administrators alongside a leading TDF provider.

Ascensus and American Funds, which is owned by Capital Group, have brought their pooled employer plan announced last year to market.

The multi-fund Ascensus | American Funds Pooled Employer Plan is available to plan sponsors and advisers, featuring an open architecture plan menu designed by investment advisory Wilshire that can include funds from American Funds, BlackRock Inc., T. Rowe Price and Principal Financial Group, among others, according to the Wednesday announcement.

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The PEP is the first to offer American Funds Target Date Plus, which provides “personalized allocation advice” that meets savers’ needs and objectives “more closely than a traditional TDF allocation based on age,” according to the firms. The savers’ inputs are provided by the recordkeeper, and their portfolio is then managed by Morningstar Investment Management LLC’s personalized glide path.

Ascensus has been an active player in the PEP market since the savings vehicles was established with the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019 with the goal of providing lower-cost pooled plans that manage the fiduciary risk for adopting employers. Dresher, Pennsylvania-based Ascensus has $1.2 billion in PEP assets under administration, representing about 28,000 savers, according to the firm.

Another PEP provider, Aon, announced AUA of $2 billion in PEPs in November 2023, with 70 participating employers and 50,000 employees.

American Funds, meanwhile, is one of the country’s largest TDF providers by assets, seeing the most inflows among the largest 10 providers in 2023, according to the latest data from Simfund, which, like PLANADVISER, is owned by ISS STOXX. The Los Angeles-based firm has the third most overall assets in TDF funds, behind the Vanguard Group and Fidelity Investments, according to Simfund.

Through their collaboration, both Ascensus and American Funds will offer the PEP to employers and advisers through their distribution networks, according to the announcement. The firms tout the PEP as being a “streamlined solution” with efficient use by advisers and plan design flexibility for the employers.

The PEP offers 3(16) fiduciary services to manage fiduciary exposure and assist with plan administration. Financial Finesse is providing a financial wellness offering to participants.

“We’re thrilled to expand our alliance by launching the Ascensus I American Funds Pooled Employer Plan, inclusive of Target Date Plus, and support American Funds entering this growing market,” Jason Crane, Ascensus’ head of core retirement, said in a statement.

Ascensus has more than $723 billion in AUA, with brands including retirement services and consulting firm Newport and third-party administrator FuturePlan by Ascensus.

Capital Group managed more than $2.5 trillion in equity and fixed-income assets.

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