Working Together to Meet Your Investment Goals

Transcription

1 Working Together to Meet Your Investment Goals Integrated Investment Consulting Services

2 Integrated Investment Consulting Services Working Together to Meet Your Investment Goals Fiduciaries and trustees rely on us to help effectively put in place and monitor an investment strategy that consistently meets their goals. We provide well-communicated independent, proactive advice and guidance that s innovative, sophisticated, thorough, and customized to meet your needs. We take a fiduciary role with our clients to ensure our advice and recommendations are unbiased. The investment consultants in our Wealth Practice are leading advisors to mid-sized pension plans across Europe and North America. We ve been providing impartial, trusted advice free from conflict of interest since 1977 and have a wealth of experience. Our innovative approach to asset allocation is supported by extensive manager research undertaken by our offices around the world. 2

3 Our Services We provide asset allocation, investment manager selection, performance evaluation, risk review, governance review, and asset reorganization advice and services to defined benefit and defined contribution plans, nonqualified plans, endowments, and foundations. Clients are typically in the range of $10 million to $2 billion in assets. We are a team of more than 50 investment professionals, advising more than 400 clients world-wide with over $62 billion in assets. We work with you in either a full service relationship or on custom projects as and when desired. Traditional Consulting Solutions Defined benefit plans: Finding an efficient path As a defined benefit plan sponsor, your investment approach must consider a different set of risks than other investors. Our dedicated pension risk experts create customized glidepaths for our clients that take into consideration a variety of factors to manage liability risk effectively or move towards full de-risking of your pension obligations. We provide regular (as often as daily) updates on the funded status of the plan, together with advice on suitable strategies that will improve the level of funding and reduce the risk of deterioration. Defined contribution plans: Fulfilling fiduciary duties Whether corporate, public, or not-for-profit, the ideal structure of a DC investment program balances investment options with risk tolerance in light of the needs of all concerned trustees, management, participants, owners, and plan sponsors. Along with proprietary participant risk evaluation and wealth modeling tools, our approach gives your members the facts they need to make informed investment decisions. We: Provide plan design, vendor selection, investment selection, and fiduciary support Identify the risk/return of investment options that would best satisfy organizational, regulatory, and most importantly, participant-specific objectives Select a fund line-up that is cost-effective, easy to understand, and meets the participants goals Ensure participants goals are adequately monitored through proprietary tools such as our Savings InSight automated retirement builder Nonqualified plans: Avoiding the product bias In a market dominated by product brokers, we are unusual in providing nonqualified plan services on a fee-for-service basis. With us, you are assured of objective financial analysis and advice about your plans that avoids the bias of product-specific solutions. Our services include: Asset/liability analysis, asset allocation optimization, and funding optimization Analysis, audit, structuring, and management of nonqualified plans and taxable trusts that hold insurance assets (COLI, TOLI, Split-Dollar) Asset allocation capabilities, including client-tailored, tax-managed separate accounts Dedicated nonqualified plan record keeping on either a stand-alone basis or integrated with broader outsourcing capabilities through Conduent. Charitable organizations: Finding the right investment structure to meet goals While socially responsible investments are not unique to endowments, public foundations, community foundations, and other charitable organizations, they are often the prime trait of the investment approach taken by charities. We work with you to capture your goals, risk tolerance, return needs, and time horizon in an Investment Policy Statement that guides further investing. Our compliance program and benchmarks evaluation, selection of and due-diligence on investment managers and vendors, and a variety of proprietary portfolio analytics make sure the investment strategy continues to meet your original objectives. Our Investment Philosophy We believe institutional investors have the greatest success in meeting their goals when the following tenets are adopted: A documented plan that captures return goals, risk tolerances, and unique needs Recognizing asset allocation as the key driver of risk and returns and implementing an asset allocation that meets your objectives Finding the most appropriate managers in each asset class with the optimal mix of risk, return, and fees Minimizing fees at all levels of the investment program A formal, disciplined oversight and governance structure 3

4 Project-Based Solutions We offer customized, project-based solutions to our clients. While we are very flexible and capable of customizing services to meet the needs of any project, our standard project based solutions are: Investment manager and fund selection and monitoring: Identifying competitive advantage Manager research is critical to the work we do on behalf of our clients. We maintain a research report and rating database in house, and we buy the performance asset and holdings data. This gives you the best combination of market coverage, accurate information, in-depth analysis on top funds and managers in each asset class, and cost efficiency. We don t sell any data or research to third parties, and receive no fees from any manager or vendor. Asset liability modeling: Developing a dynamic de-risking strategy With our proprietary ALM Express asset liability model and the outsourced GEMS (General Economy and Market Simulator) capital market simulations, we can compare your current investment strategy one that s often static without recognizing pension plan dynamics to a dynamic investment approach that takes the plan to its Endgame Strategy. In many cases this will gradually de-risk a pension plan (often frozen) as its funded status improves, to be fully de-risked by the time the plan is above fully funded status. Objective third-party audit and review: Ensuring fiduciary needs are met Clients look to us to provide an unbiased assessment of the investment oversight and management process. We start by reviewing the Investment Policy Statement, then analyze its implementation and compliance. We make sure the asset allocation matches up with the organization s goals and unique needs. We review investment managers performance, reasonableness of fees, and overall valueadd. We ll look closely at your performance reporting to make sure it helps in prudent decision-making. Finally, our review process takes note of any areas of investment risk that don t appear to be addressed adequately. Our analysis and review is realistic, thorough, and well documented. Vendor searches: Letting you focus on what you do best Whether it s specific service providers or best-of-breed vendor searches based on your criteria, we manage the full process. We develop the scope of services, oversee the implementation of services, manage quality control, and handle all follow-ups. We take responsibility for the routine tasks a vendor search entails, so that you can focus on what you do best managing your business and fulfilling the needs of your customers, donors, and participants. We focus on what matters most to our clients selecting and evaluating fund managers who offer sustained competitive advantages that produce above-average returns with a commensurate level of risk. Termination annuity services: Winding down safely Acting as a fiduciary for the advice we give, we provide plan sponsors with advice concerning the selection of the safest available annuity provider, consistent with regulatory guidance, and manage the entire process of winding down the plan and purchasing group annuities. We operate on a fee-for-service basis, thus eliminating any inherent conflicts of interest. 4

5 Why Choose Us? We are impartial. We don t manage proprietary investment funds. Our solutions are always based on our independent research and client needs. We bring ideas and experience. We provide practical insight shaped by each client s needs and a holistic approach to investment consulting. You can draw on our global perspective, with access to our most senior level consultants and best ideas. We are proactive. You will deal with advisors who understand every facet of DC and DB plans and have the resources, credentials, and wealth of experience needed to identify and resolve any issues. We offer client-centric technology. Our approach combines the best external software with our internal proprietary models to deliver flexible, market-sensitive advice. Our advice is customized for each of our clients. Let s get started. For more information on our investment consulting services, contact our Wealth Practice consulting team at or hrservices@conduent.com About Conduent Conduent is the world s largest provider of diversified business process services with leading capabilities in transaction processing, automation, analytics and constituent experience. We work with both government and commercial customers in assisting them to deliver quality services to the people they serve. We manage interactions with patients and the insured for a significant portion of the U.S. healthcare industry. We re the customer interface for large segments of the technology industry. And, we re the operational and processing partner of choice for public transportation systems around the world. Whether it s digital payments, claims processing, benefit administration, automated tolling, customer care or distributed learning Conduent manages and modernizes these interactions to create value for both our clients and their constituents. Learn more at Conduent Business Services, LLC. All rights reserved. Conduent and Conduent Design are trademarks of Conduent Business Services, LLC in the United States and/or other countries. BR11963C