Successful Defined Contribution Investment Design: How to Align Target-Date, Core, and Income Strategies to the PRICE of Retirement

Successful Defined Contribution Investment Design offers a comprehensive guidebook for fiduciaries tasked with structuring and implementing a 401(k) or other defined contribution (DC) pension plan. More than a collection of the usual piecemeal information, this book seeks to offer a complete, contemporary framework for plan design, together with tested methodologies and analytic techniques to help streamline plan monitoring, management and improve participant outcomes. Examples from plan sponsors provide on-the-ground insight while suggestions from DC consultants add expert perspective. Views from ERISA expert counsel provide additional understanding—along with input from academic thought leaders. Finally, investment evaluation and analysis is joined with participant savings and asset allocation data to look prospectively at potential outcomes, and case studies illustrate real-world implementation of objective-aligned asset allocation such as custom target-date strategies. Though the focus is primarily on U.S. plan design, author perspectives from countries including Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada provide relevant and helpful viewpoints for both new and experienced plan fiduciaries.

For the vast majority of workers, DC plans have replaced traditional defined benefit pension plans as the primary source of employer-provided retirement income. This book provides comprehensive guidance to help you construct a plan to help workers to retire with confidence.

• Adopt a framework for DC evaluation and structure
• Learn new methodologies for investment choice evaluation
• Use the innovative PIMCO Retirement Income Cost Estimate—or PRICE—to help quantify the amount of money a worker needs to create and stay on track to building a real income stream in retirement
• Examine methodologies used at major companies in the U.S. and globally

DC plans are the most rapidly growing retirement market in the world, yet sources of consolidated structural and analytical guidance are lacking. Successful Defined Contribution Investment Design fills the gap with a comprehensive handbook that covers the bases to help you develop an objective-aligned defined contribution plan.

Keywords: defined contribution plan structure; DC plan evaluation; DC plan analysis; DC plan methodologies; DC plan framework; 401(k) structure; DC plan types; DC plan design; DC plan analytics; DC plan investments; DC plan menu; DC plan sponsors; DC plan consultant; DC plan decision making; PIMCO PRICE methodology; U.S. DC plans; global DC plans; Building Defined Contribution Plans; Stacy Schaus; Ying Gao, Finance & Investments Special Topics