The Advantages of Separately Managed Accounts in 401ks: Fi360 Annual Conference

Tim Friday, Institutional Services Group CEO and president with Pittsburgh-based Mid Atlantic Trust Company, used his teenage daughter’s Snapchat social media habits to make a point about change, and how it related to products inside 401ks and similar DB plans.

Friday hosted a session at Fi360’s annual conference on Thursday in San Diego, titled “The New World of Separately Managed Accounts Within a 401k Plan,” which touched on the current SMA landscape, why they’re increasingly used in 401k plans, and what to watch for if 401k advisors decide to implement an SMA strategy.

“Today, more and more advisors and sponsors are making them available as default options with the 401k,” Friday explained. “And there are fewer hurdles in doing so than there were in the past.”

Overall, minimum requirements to invest in SMAs went from a traditional amount of $250,000, down to as little as $25,000 in the individual wealth management space. In 401ks, the minimums were reduced further, from $250,000 down to zero.

“The reasons SMAs are growing in popularity is that they offer greater transparency with lower fees, the ability to finetune the investments over and above a publicly stated mutual fund objective, and the ability to own the actual underlying securities rather than pro-rata shares,” he said.

Historically, he added, if advisors wanted to create a unique strategy or use the investment intelligence of a third-party manager within a 401k application, they could, in fact, create a “quasi” model strategy using the core line-up of investments being offered to participants as a whole.

Today, the benefits of including an SMA in a retirement plan menu include:

And what should advisors look for when implementing an SMA strategy in a 401k?

“Ask yourself how the performance will be monitored, either at the at the plan or composite level, or through a data feed in the recordkeeping system. Also, who will create the proper fee disclosures for the strategy, especially for QDIAs and 404a-5 participant disclosure, both initially and annually.”

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