MacKay Shields Introduces Bond Strategy CITs

MacKay will act as adviser to two SEI Trust Company sponsored collective investment trusts (CITs), implementing MacKay’s Core Plus Bond and Unconstrained Bond strategies.

“As the retirement market and the investment landscape continue to evolve, we see participants and sponsors looking for key ways to diversify their portfolios with well-established core fixed income strategies along with alternatives to traditional fixed income strategies. To help defined contribution investors meet their objectives, we believe that our Core Plus and Unconstrained Bond strategies are well-positioned to deliver attractive risk-adjusted returns,” MacKay told PLANSPONSOR.

The MacKay Shields Core Plus Bond CIT aims to deliver returns by opportunistically identifying investments in global developed and emerging markets as well as high yield debt securities. The MacKay Shields Unconstrained Bond CIT employs a flexible investment process that allocates investments across the global fixed income markets. MacKay Shields has been managing these strategies via mutual funds and separate accounts since 1999 (Core Plus Bond) and 2009 (Unconstrained Bond).

Defined Contribution plans can get access to the Core Plus and Unconstrained strategies through SEI and their partnerships with recordkeeping platforms or MacKay Shields and NYLIM (New York Life Investment Management), the company said.

“Collective investment trusts have emerged as a key vehicle for plan sponsors moving from the defined benefit to the defined contribution model,” says John Akkerman, MacKay’s Global Head of Distribution. “We at MacKay Shields are committed to meeting institutional investors’ needs as the retirement market continues to evolve, and we believe that collective investment trusts implementing our established fixed income strategies will create new opportunities for plan sponsors as they continue to adopt the defined contribution model.”