What happens when a retirement plan firm aggregator and a retirement plan service provider team in the CIT space? We’re about to find out.
Industry heavyweights GRP Advisor Alliance and Envestnet | Retirement Solutions launched Foundational Retirement Solutions (FRS), a suite of collective investment trusts.
The companies joined forces with Reliance Trust, an FIS company, to release 10 core index funds and a passive target date fund available to retirement plans, regardless of size.
They tout the “scale of GRPAA, the investment acumen of Envestnet | Retirement Solutions and the leadership of Reliance Trust as sponsor and trustee” in the broad set of CITs to which member firms will have access.
The suite is “focused on providing retirement plan advisors and plan sponsors with competitive pricing, access to some of the most well-known investment providers in the industry, and strategies that deliver a holistic offering to participants.”
The companies note that collective investment trusts offer an efficient and flexible structure for ERISA retirement plans, lowering the cost of investments for participants while seeking to positively impact their investment rate of return.
In a sign of what’s old is new, CITs have been available for over 75 years and, up to this point, “have been used by only the largest retirement plans in the country.”
With the advent of Foundational Retirement Solutions, CITs and their associated benefits can be used with plans of all sizes—regardless of assets or number of participants, the companies claim.
“We’re incredibly pleased to partner with both ERS and Reliance Trust to accelerate the FRS CIT program,” Christopher Giles, Senior Managing Partner at GRPAA, said in a statement. “This new, exclusive offering of CITs provides advisors and plan sponsors with access to investments that help manage participant investment expenses and provide real, tangible benefits to plans of all sizes.”
“This partnership symbolizes a new era as we enter the CIT marketplace,” added Babu Sivadasan Group President at Envestnet | Retirement Solutions. “In GRPAA and Reliance Trust we have partners that complement our scale, align with our investment philosophy, and share our desire to bring about real change in the retirement plan marketplace. We look forward to helping forge a new future for the industry.”
With more than 20 years serving financial markets, John Sullivan is the former editor-in-chief of Investment Advisor magazine and retirement editor of ThinkAdvisor.com. Sullivan is also the former editor of Boomer Market Advisor and Bank Advisor magazines, and has a background in the insurance and investment industries in addition to his journalism roots.
