Products October 24, 2024

Product & Service Launches

OneDigital launches new benefits platform; Transamerica managed advice available for contractors PEP; Gainbridge annuities available to RIAs via RetireOne; and more. 

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OneDigital Launches New Benefits Platform 

 OneDigital has brought a new, all-in-one benefits platform to market for employers. 
 
The offering, Impact Studio, gives employers a platform to track and manage total spending on health and benefits, retirement, wages and salaries. It also “maximizes employer spending by aligning investment to benchmarking and employee value,” according to the announcement. 
 
OneDigital touted the new system’s ability to help benefits managers with employee turnover and clear messaging and administration of employee offerings to attract and retain talent.  

“By integrating medical, ancillary, stop loss and retirement benchmarking tools with other functionalities such as claims utilization and employee value perception insights, Impact Studio gives OneDigital consultants and their clients greater visibility into their benefits programs, enabling the ability to control costs and drive impact for their employees,” the firm wrote in the announcement.  

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Transamerica’s Managed Advice Now Available to Contractor’s PEP

Transamerica Corp. announced its managed advice offering will be the exclusive offering to the Contractors Plan, a $2 billion pooled employer plan administering retirement benefits to nearly 1,500 employers and more than 64,500 workers.  
 
The offering comes through an expanded partnership between Transamerica and third-party administrator Fringe Benefit Group Inc., which is administering the PEP. Through the expanded partnership, FBG will offer to plan participants Transamerica’s managed account offering that includes a multilingual website, retirement planning tools and a menu of investment options for their retirement plans.  
 
“We are excited to expand this collaboration, leveraging our pooled plan capabilities as a scalable and efficient model for new plan growth,” Darren Zino, Transamerica’s head of retirement distribution, said in a statement. “We will lean into FBG and The Contractors Plan’s incredible network to enable us to expand retirement plans and service offerings to even more hardworking Americans.” 
 
FBG has a history of creating benefit programs for government contractors, restaurants, retail and staffing companies. 

Gainbridge Non-Tax-Deferred Annuities Available at RetireOne 

Annuity seller Gainbridge, a Group 1001 company, has partnered with distributor RetireOne to offer Gainbridge’s annuities to registered investment advisers.  

RIAs can now access through RetireOne two Gainbridge high-yield, multi-year guaranteed annuity products, Fastbreak and SteadyPace. The firms noted in the announcement that RetireOne is the “first outsourced insurance desk” to offer non-tax-deferred annuity products.  
 
“Gainbridge Life offers multi-year guaranteed annuity products that are a game-changer for our advisor network,” RetireOne President Jeff Cusack said in a statement. “With SteadyPace and FastBreak, our clients can access some of the highest yields in the industry, coupled with the security and principal protection they expect.” 
 
FastBreak and SteadyPace have fixed rates as high as 5.50% annual percentage yield, according to the firms.  

 
Morgan Stanley Closes Private Markets Fund With $2B Committed 

Morgan Stanley Investment Management has secured $2 billion in committed capital for its new North Haven Tactical Value II Fund LP. 

The fund invests in credit, hybrid investments and non-controlling equity investments across sectors and geographical regions. The capital raise drew both institutional and qualified individuals and is nearly 50% more of a raise than its predecessor fund, NHTV I, the firm noted.  

Thomas Cahill and Pedro Teixeira, co-heads of Morgan Stanley’s tactical value investing, billed the fund as being “a highly diversified portfolio of uncorrelated investments unconstrained by the narrower mandates of traditional private equity or private credit strategies.” 

Products October 24, 2024

Agilis Launches Lifetime Income Tool PensionBuilder

Plan sponsors can provide access to the product outside of their plans, with Agilis taking on the bulk of the fiduciary duty of selecting the best insurance providers available.

 

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Agilis Partners LLC announced on Thursday the launch of a new lifetime income product, the Agilis PensionBuilder, which allows participants to purchase an annuity at group pricing to create a “personal pension.”

In collaboration with Alight Solutions, PensionBuilder enables eligible employees and retirees to convert their defined contribution plan savings into a guaranteed income stream for life. Unlike other lifetime income products that have come to market recently, the Agilis product functions outside the plan, and Agilis takes on the bulk of the fiduciary responsibility for selecting an annuity provider.

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Michael Clark, chief commercial officer at Agilis, explains that if an employer decides to offer PensionBuilder, Agilis would gain access to some of that company’s recordkeeping data and would send communications to eligible participants, asking if they would like to convert some of their DC balance into a monthly income stream.

Eligible participants would be participants 59½ or older and those who have already retired.

PensionBuilder offers support services and allows participants to use tools to model different annuity options and match them with retirement goals. Alight’s call center can also walk participants through the modeling of annuity options.

After a participant makes preliminary elections, deciding how much money to annuitize and what type of annuity to use, Agilis would bid and evaluate a pool of insurers and compare pricing options. Clark says this strategy, which the firm also uses when helping defined benefit plan sponsors conduct pension risk transfers, is competitive with transparent pricing.

“[This] removes a lot of the fiduciary risk from the employer, because we’re taking on that fiduciary responsibility,” Clark says.

A plan sponsor using this service would still have a level of fiduciary responsibility in allowing Agilis to make this offer and select the insurer.

Benefit Can Be Offered Periodically

Another key aspect to PensionBuilder is that participants have a 60-day time window to elect to use the tool and either take their benefit as a lump sum or forgo the lump sum and have that benefit transferred to an insurer to receive the annuity payments. The time window starts at an arbitrary date for the eligible group, Clark says. The eligible group can all be inactive participants age 55 or older with a minimum balance and/or can include employees age 59.5 or older (if there is an in-service withdrawal option) and a minimum balance as well.

Clark says the idea is that a plan sponsor could offer PensionBuilder at a regular cadence—most likely annually—to capture newly eligible participants and to give participants the option to transact multiple times.

“Having those deadlines put on people actually creates the urgency for them to make a decision,” Clark says. “We feel like 60 days gives people ample amount of time to explore [their options].”

Clark says only about 10% of employers offer any sort of lifetime income option, and fewer than 10% of employees who have access to these solutions actually use them. Clark attributes this lack of utilization to employees saying they will “do it later” and a lack of urgency, which causes them not to act.

 Rollover Protects Against Withdrawals Being Taxed

When it comes time to purchase the annuity, Clark explains that the money would come out of a participant’s DC plan balance and roll into an individual retirement account. A group annuity contract will then be created on behalf of the IRA holders. The IRA money is rolled over to the insurance company to buy the annuity and is not withdrawn. This strategy avoids the taxation that occurs when withdrawing from a 401(k) plan.

Clark adds that PensionBuilder offers several annuity options, including single-life annuities, joint survivor annuities and return of premium options.

With many in-plan lifetime income products, Clark finds that plan sponsors often have to commit to a product that uses the same life expectancy assumption across that employer’s entire workforce.

“That’s problematic, because we know that women live long than men, so those lifetime income amounts should be priced differently,” Clark says. “You can’t do that legally with an in-plan solution, and it’s something that the lifetime income solution providers like to sweep under the rug.”

He argues that because PensionBuilder offers “competitive and transparent pricing,” as well as flexibility in annuity options, employers can count on their employees getting an annuity reflective of their life expectancy.

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