Avi Nachmany, Director of Research, Strategic Insight, an Asset International Company

I may be traveling on a fast train between Madrid and Seville on a short family vacation, but I am not just thinking about Spain. I am also thinking about my Strategic Insight colleagues who are traveling: Sonia, our senior researcher, visiting India; Jag and Daniel, who head Strategic Insight's global advisory efforts, on their way to Tokyo and Hong Kong; and others. This globe-trotting, which seemed somewhat exotic 20 years ago, leads me back to thinking about how to allocate the investments in a portfolio. Should one invest in developed countries such as the Euro Zone and the US, or in the emerging markets, or in "frontier" markets?  How connected and correlated is today's investment world? Will the coming decade experience more global economic integration, or greater isolationism?

These are key questions for SI analysts communicating every day with our clients - investment management firms worldwide that together oversee more than $20 trillion of assets. Where should fund managers expand their search for investment management talent (or distribution partnerships)? How should they construct asset allocation for their one-stop solutions? What guidance should they offer to financial advisors searching for ways to help their clients in stock mutual funds build wealth for the long run within retirement accounts?

Since 2003 and for much of the subsequent years, international equity funds increased their share of the US mutual fund industry, almost doubling their share of all stock fund assets at the beginning of the decade to near 30% lately. In Strategic Insight's mutual fund industry Forecast for 2010, we observed the rapid increase in deposits into international equity funds last year (led by diversified emerging markets or single-country emerging markets) and projected further above-average gains for 2010. [Find out more about our forecast report here]

Looking ahead to 2010, and beyond: are inflows to international equity funds likely to resume the explosive growth they enjoyed from 2003 through 2007? During those five years, roughly $700 billion were net invested in international equity funds, partly triggered by the outperformance of international stocks versus the S&P 500, as seen below.

 

A similar very large amount was allocated to non-US securities held by US-centered equity funds (substituting for US securities). Together with parallel actions among institutional investors, I guesstimate that more than $2 trillion were transferred to international securities and away from US securities during 2003-2007. At the same time, there were similar patterns of investment away from US dollars within a number of developed markets overseas. These huge rebalances triggered massive liquidity-induced price appreciation in certain capital markets (and US dollar depreciation), especially within emerging economies. Some of these trends paused during the 2008-2009 worldwide crisis but may now be resuming. Since April 2009, accelerating international stock fund net flow trends (led by Emerging Markets) are exemplified above.

In addition to these rising net inflows, we see a near-consensus about the long-term fate of the US dollar, and further global diversification away by US stock fund investors who traditionally had concentrated nearly all their investments in US stocks. There are also signs of a growing emergence of global asset allocation funds as a core equity strategy among investors and financial advisors. All these factors suggest that 2010 and beyond will continue to witness a secular trend towards higher allocation of financial assets to international stock funds.

Many readers of SI research would recognize our persistent advocacy for US stock investors to have a starting point of 50% of assets in stocks in US securities (or funds) and 50% of stock assets in International equity funds. For the coming decade, maybe a new paradigm is in order: 33% Emerging and Frontier Markets; 33% International Developed markets; and 33% US. This allocation may be more in line with where the world's wealth will be held at the end of this coming decade. Why not get there now?

Back to a vacation mindset. One of the places I find most inspiring when thinking about long-term wealth creation are museums. In a museum you can observe timeless masters of innovation and beauty - as they are marveled at by young and optimistic visitors from China, India, Malaysia, Norway, Australia, Brazil, Russia, Abu Dubai, the US, and so many other exciting places. Reflecting on such excited museum visitors, and on their investment lives to be, I note that in the past decade the average US Large Cap Core stock fund earned virtually nothing; meanwhile, the average International stock fund earned a cumulative 40% (partly driven by currency advantages). And Diversified Emerging Market funds doubled in value, while Latin America stock funds quadrupled!

Stock returns in the next 10 years will likely be very different than the last 10. But a 33%:33%:33% asset allocation for one's global stock portfolio, as a starting point, feels like a bet founded on an optimistic view of our world's future.

Missed Part 1?
Planning for 2010, I:
Tectonic Plate Shifts and the Insatiable Demand for Bond Funds

Missed Part 2?
Planning for 2010, II:
"There's No Way You Can Bet Against America & Win" (Warren Buffet)

Avi Nachmany, Director of Research, Strategic Insight, an Asset International Company

 

I Googled Warren Buffet's eloquent quote from the depth of the recent economic crisis. Joe Weisenthal at The Business Insider Website (http://www.businessinsider.com/joe-weisenthal) made the intriguing observation that one should ignore the optimistic statement ("There's no way you can bet against America and win"), focus instead on his recent investments in Burlington Northern, Exxon and Wal-Mart: "He doesn't see us, at least right now, as some glimmering, efficient, modern city on a hill," Weisenthal writes. "We're a crowded country, using coal, paying out the nose (if) we can afford to go to the pump, while buying our Nestle (also a new holding) junk food at Wal-Mart."  

While spiking stock prices worldwide are signaling economic recovery (and in some markets even euphoria), investors in stock mutual funds in the US remain cautious, as mirrored by what they do with their money. Strategic Insight always chooses to observe what individuals do with their personal cash flows and focus less on what individuals report as their improving or deteriorating sentiments.

 

Phil Herzog, our Chief Technology Office, and I invented the methodology of calculating mutual fund cash flows 20 years ago. This is still a unique algorithm which each month SI fine-tunes by $15 billion to $20 billion before we publish the data in our Simfund database, which tracks the nation's $12 trillion of mutual fund assets. [You can learn more about us here: http://www.sionline.com/aboutsi/default.asp.] What do we learn by watching the cash flow actions by investors in stock mutual funds? Their purchasing activity since the stock markets started to rebound remained very cautious. The remarkable rise in stock prices the past nine months was not followed by corresponding significant increases in stock fund purchasing. As the graph below shows, sales of stock funds rose only slightly since March.

 

 

With little pickup in purchasing and little net purchasing (purchases less withdrawals) of  stock funds in the second half of 2009, it is clear that the record recovery of stock prices has not been supported by significant liquidity from individual investors' cash (or, as suggested by other observers, by net buying by private 401(k) and similar pension plans). We hypothecate that at least some stock market liquidity, and the resulting higher prices, was supplied by hedge funds, who may have increased their bets that stocks will rise (by shifting to becoming more long-biased). If stock-price levels continue to rise in 2010 due to improving economic and employment conditions, individual investors should start to add to their stock fund positions and thus contribute liquidity to the stock markets too.

 

As suggested below, net inflows to bond mutual funds have been significant in 2009. Contrastingly, net inflows to stock funds, rebounding some during the spring and summer after the stock market trough in March, have moderated since and were slightly negative in many recent weeks. Ambivalence about the too-quick increase in stock prices, some "get near even and then get out" withdrawals, and uncertainties about employment and real-estate wealth have combined for the slowdown in net flows of cash to stock funds (despite some pickup in mid-December, though).

 

 

Looking ahead to the coming year, a  number of developments are needed for renewed stock-fund purchasing and net inflows. First, more time must pass since the financial market trough; each crisis is difference, but I estimate that 12-18 months need to pass for many investors to re-engage in a meaningful way. Second, we need to see positive indications, such as interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve, that the economy is heading upward, and signs of progress (instead of limbo) in Washington.

 

Assuming positive economic developments unfold this year, Strategic Insight's Forecast for 2010 projects stock-fund purchasing activity to increase by 20% this year - after falling by nearly 25% during 2009. [Find out more about our forecast report here: http://www.sionline.com/published/2009-whitepapers/main.asp ] Gains by international funds and balanced-type funds are projected to be above average while sales increases of US stock funds might lag. 

Personally, though, I am still mulling over Mr. Buffet's conviction that one shouldn't bet against America. Maybe he meant not to bet against the many ideas of America that led to his own success: entrepreneurship, innovation, self-determination, and optimism. Today, these many ideas are behind the fast-growing economies worldwide and especially in some of the Emerging and Frontier Markets.

 

And, tracking stock mutual fund purchasing activity as we do at Strategic Insight, I realize I am not alone in searching for signs of renewed stock-market confidence. I am joined by many of the 50 million American households - some living in towns like Warren Buffet's Omaha - still hesitant to add to their stock mutual fund holdings. Yet we all hope over time to invest in such funds to build wealth for retirement, for our children's educations, or for travels to the many places around the world starting to look like New York or Chicago - places even more crowded with optimists who invest in entrepreneurship, innovation, and self-determination.

 

Missed Part 1?
Planning for 2010, I:
Tectonic Plate Shifts and the Insatiable Demand for Bond Funds

Avi Nachmany, Director of Research, Strategic Insight, an Asset International Company

 

I am fascinated by tectonic plate shifts. Deep under ground, imperceptible most days, these parts of the earth's crust drift perhaps a few inches per year - and then suddenly, one plate crashes into another, triggering a seismic shock, an earthquake, a volcanic eruption, a tsunami like the one devastating many communities in Southeast Asia five years ago. I was introduced to the enormous impact of geology by the fantastic historian-geologist Simon Winchester (www.simonwinchester.com); I recommend his book, Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded: August 27, 1883, to learn about trade routes, ancient map making, the Indo-Australian Plate, and so much more, or, understand important aspects of the history of the American West in his A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906.

We do not know when the next earthquake will shake San Francisco, or the next plate movement will trigger another tsunami. We only know it will happen.

 

I got to worrying about tectonic plates as we were publishing our mutual fund industry Forecast for 2010 (find out more about the report here: http://www.sionline.com/published/2009-whitepapers/main.asp ). 

Beginning in the late 1970s and continuing through the entire modern era of the mutual fund industry,  interest rates have been falling as illustrated below. The sharp decline of interest rates in 1984-87 triggered the first boom in purchases of bond mutual funds by individual investors (and coincided with the 1986 founding of Strategic Insight with our first report, "Mutual Funds: Investing in the Future.")  Subsequent interest rates down-trends triggered new waves of bond fund purchasing activity, shown below.

 

 

Then, in 2009, the pace of bond-fund purchasing exploded. For all of 2009, new sales of bond funds rose 50% from their 2008 pace. This meant that investors poured roughly $400 billion - by far an all-time record - into bond funds on a net basis (purchasing less withdrawals).

 

The insatiable interest in bond funds during 2009 was not surprising. Shell-shocked savers and investors were holding more than $10 trillion in cash throughout the banking system and money market mutual funds, on which they often were earning only fractions of a percentage point (you can't even buy a Starbucks latte with the monthly interest on a $100,000 deposit). We see as inevitable the further migration of investor cash into higher-yielding income vehicles - in other words, bonds and bond mutual funds - based in part on their backwards-looking appeal (25+ years of falling interest rates and correspondingly high total returns) of bonds and bond funds, and in part on the lingering skepticism about the stock market recovery. Strategic Insight projects bond fund sales to rise a further 17% in 2010.

 

 

In our view the fastest sales acceleration last year - and projected to continue in 2010 - is in the Corporate Bond fund sector, as investment opportunities continue to shift to analysis of companies' credit risks and away from US Treasury bonds. Thus, the US Government Bond fund sector is the only bond fund category showing sales moderations in our projection. The "Strategic Income" sector - including multi-sector funds investing in the US and internationally - remains the largest bond fund sales sector. Among Municipal Bond funds, national programs outgrew single-state funds in 2009 and are projected to repeat such performance next year.

 

Bond fund demand will continue to be fueled by investors shifting money out of bank deposit accounts earning near-zero rates. Even when the Federal Reserve starts moving short-term interest rates higher, such change would be slow, measured, and driven by feedback from the real economy. For savers tired of earning zero, the appeal of bond funds - with their 4%+ annual dividend promise, 2009's 15%+ total returns, and 25-years of tailwinds, remains irresistible.

 

 

These trends have been visible in 2009 and are likely to continue this year. But like the Indo-Australian plate, slowly pushing Everest even higher, the tectonic plates of rising global interest rates are also moving, yet in less visible ways to most investors. US Government debt, the growing supply of dollars, competition for global funding away from the US dollar, and other oft- mentioned triggers of inflation, are all lining up to reverse the 30-year trend of falling interest rates.

 

Is the ravenous demand for bond funds today signaling the next bubble, likely to burst with a huge seismic bang in the coming years? Slow economic recovery and very slowly rising short-term interest rates suggest that we might hit a point - possibly in 2011? - when longer-term interest rates start to rise significantly and the value of bond funds that invest in longer-term debt start to decline. By the time that happens, safety- and income-seeking investors will have added $1 trillion-plus to their bond fund portfolios from 2009 through 2001, and will then be holding $3 trillion of assets (with trillions more of bonds held by individuals and institutions outside mutual funds).

 

How should financial advisors, pension plans, broker-dealers, and investment management companies collaborate to guide such investors in the coming years? Should investors be nudged, for example, into investments better-suited for rising long-term interest rates and an inflationary environment? What can be done beyond education and disclosure?

 

We do not know when next the earth shakes, a volcano erupts, or a tsunami sweeps. All that we know is the predictability of it happening, given that tectonic plates are moving. All of us - advisors, fiduciaries, and investors alike - should pay close attention to the interest rate seismographs.

Read Part II
Planning for 2010, II:
"There's No Way You Can Bet Against America & Win" (Warren Buffet)

By Jag Alexeyev

 

The meteoric success of Carmignac, an investment manager based in Paris, is forcing the industry to think again beyond its box. In just one year, Carmignac's flagship fund went from #40 in assets in Europe to number one. Overall the boutique captured $15 billion of net inflows through the summer, while many other companies struggled to get back on their feet. How did they do it, and what does it mean for the industry?

 

Strategic Insight's client engagements and published research in recent weeks delved into the many factors behind Carmignac's success, from (not so) simple performance results to the rising importance of balanced and asset allocation structures, long-term brand building, steadfast investment focus, clarity of message, and a distinct distribution approach. Their story has resonated not only in Europe, but also in major cities such as Boston, where we just finished a round of meetings. It also spread as far as India, where the media tuned in to how much Carmignac was putting into their stock markets in search of higher returns, a common theme uniting emerging markets with the rest of the world today.

 

While the manager's progress offers many lessons, it also means that other fund managers no longer have the same old excuses for marketing failure. If a relatively tiny firm situated in the ritzy Place Vendôme can grow to become the highest selling manager in Europe, why can't others with more resources do better? Many are rethinking what it takes to be successful in the investment business, especially in the shadow of mega deals such as Blackrock and Barclays. Although the new BGF funds group is quite a bit bigger in assets, Carmignac has captured more inflows to its long-term funds this year -- indeed, twice as much if ETFs are excluded.

 

If all the issues raised by this aren't enough, fund executives are contending with a slew of additional challenges today, from hedge fund managers aggressively seeking to offer alternative UCITS products to a reappraisal of constant NAV pricing of money funds. On the bright side, industry flows rebounded strongly worldwide between April and July. But financial markets have come far too, leaving some advisors with more questions than answers about what to do next for clients, and more hard work for fund managers to guide the way.

 

About Jag Alexeyev, Senior Managing Director & Head of Global Research, Strategic Insight Jag Alexeyev directs Strategic Insight's global investment industry research and consulting effort. Leading the group's global expansion, Alexeyev is also the head editor and author of SI's international publications on fund management and the architect behind the Simfund Global analytical platform.

By Daniel Enskat

 

$250 billion in net flows to equity and fixed-income funds in the first half of 2009, the best performance for stocks in any quarter since the late 1990s and the 20th consecutive week of positive long-term mutual fund flows through mid-August 2009 helped draw investors cautiously back into investments. Especially emerging markets and Asia are described as having turned the corner to once again lead the way as a growth driver for the industry.

 

Emerging Market Aggregate Demand Transforms Distribution Landscape

 

"Emerging markets are providing an increasing portion of our sales revenue", Europacorp CEO Jean-Julien Baronnet said in a recent FT article, emphasizing that aggregate demand from emerging markets is transforming the landscape for distribution.

 

This could have been a statement from an asset management CEO, but in this case Baronnet was talking about film distribution. Europacorp was founded by Luc Besson and a recent animated movie, "Arthur & the Invisibles" (with Robert de Niro, David Bowie, and Snoop Dogg), brought in about $115 million at the box office worldwide, despite an only lackluster contribution of $15 million from the US.

 

Focusing on movies with cross-border appeal, Europacorp plans to produce more "melting-pot" movies, mixing actors and cultures in non-traditional ways. The importance of emerging markets and the success of "melting-pot" funds also dominated the global fund industry of late.

 

All of the ten best selling new fund launches in both May and June globally came from Asia. In June 2009, those ten funds, highlighted below, attracted in excess of $7 billion combined. Noticeably, almost all of the Japanese offerings were co-branded "melting-pot" funds, mixing actors and cultural themes, among them Nomura Pictet Genome, Nomura RCM Green Tech or Fortis Nikko China Equity.

 

 

Enter BRIC, the Dragon and the Komodo, But Don't Forget the U.S. and Europe

 

In 2001 Goldman Sachs coined the term "BRIC" in a research paper to highlight the importance and growth potential for Brazil, Russia, India and China¹.

 

Then, Schroders at the end of 2007 within a few months raised over $10 billion in net flows to a local BRIC fund in Korea², and industry observers suggested to complete the "BRIC-K" by adding Korea to the mix.

 

Now the head of Indonesia research at CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets put out a research note entitled "Chindonesia: Enter the Komodo"³, hoping to push the triangle of China, India and his area of expertise, Indonesia (the Komodo is a reptile indigenous to eastern Indonesia).

 

And indeed, looking at the ten bestselling funds across Asia for the first half of 2009 below also shows products from Southeast Asia, albeit mostly institutional, including multiple entries for India and Thailand.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yet, while emerging markets as an investment and distribution theme are becoming more important for the industry, it is still too early to announce the era of the "Komodo" - or the "Dragon", for that matter. As highlighted in the table which follows, less than 10% of the $250 billion committed to long-term funds globally year-to-date came from Asia.

 

Global Mutual Fund Net Flows, 1H 2009 US$ Billion
	Equity	Mixed	Bond	Other	Subtotal Long-Term	Money Market	Total
Asia	7	-5	10	7	19	9	27
Europe Local	20	-2	4	-14	9	19	28
Int’l/Offshore	29	4	27	-27	33	-18	16
US	28	-5	166	-	189	-184	5
Total	82	-6	211	-33	253	-175	78
Source: Strategic Insight Global.

 

 

New vs. Old and Themes vs. Asset Allocation

Furthermore, comparing the top selling long-term funds in Asia to Europe and the US, we observe "New vs. Old" and "Thematic vs. Balanced" buying patterns.

 

As shown below, in the US, PIMCO's Total Return fund alone gathered over $20 billion in net new money in the first half of 2009 ($25 billion through July 2009, to a total of $170 billion in assets), followed by the Vanguard Total Stock Market with over $6 billion in flows.

 

 

In Europe, boutique manager Carmignac topped the list with almost $7 billion in new money in France and across Europe to its Patrimoine product, alongside a number of institutionally driven corporate bond funds and selected themes including high yield, total return and world mining. Other funds with more than $1 billion in net inflows included capital protection vehicles (DWS Rendite Plus Garant, $1.3 billion) as well as themes (Julius Baer Physical Gold, $1.2 billion).

 

 

With top selling funds we currently see a mix of investment solutions around balanced and asset allocation strategies on the one end of the spectrum, and themes as well as sectors (often including ETF structures) as building blocks for such solutions on the other end of the spectrum.

 

By region the data shows an emphasis on existing products in the US, new funds in Asia and mix between the two in Europe. Those product development/management trends are mostly a function of whether an industry is primarily driven by retirement needs of retail investors (401k plans in the US, Superannuation in Australia, etc).

 

The US mutual fund association, ICI, in early 2009 published a study on "Characteristics of Mutual Fund Investors, 2008"⁴, finding that 95% of mutual fund investors were focused on retirement saving. Thus, while in less developed markets the focus is on getting investors to move from a savings to an investment mentality, often via new and exciting products, the US and Australia face a different set of challenges around investors' retirement needs.

 

A recent study by the PewResearchCenter entitled "Different Age Group, Different Recessions" provides useful lessons for mutual fund companies on which type of client suffered most during the downturn and what it means for their retirement plans and investments⁵. Key findings from the report include:

 

Investment Losses, By Age Group: 71% of investors between 18-29 and 56% of investors over 65 had NO losses or NO investments, sharply different from the age group 50-64, called the "Threshold Generation", where one third lost 20-40% of their assets.

 

As a result, 75% of those "threshold" investors say that the recession will make it harder for them to meet their retirement needs. Importantly, 58% of threshold investors stated that the recession has caused stress in the family, while 58% of investors over 65% stated is has NOT caused stress in the family.

 

Retirement savings took a substantial hit in 2008 and investment managers/distributors need to rethink how to connect with investors (before/throughout and after the crisis), how to educate them effectively and what kind of products to provide.

 

When it comes to emotional and behavioral aspects of investor decision making, Kahneman and Tversky pioneered so-called "Prospect Theory" and received a Nobel prize in economics for their work in 2002. One of Kahneman's collaborators, University of Chicago professor Richard Thaler in a recent book called "Nudge" noted that it seems reasonable to say that people make good choices in contexts in which they have experience, good information and prompt feedback, for example ice cream flavors, while they do less well in areas where they are inexperienced and poorly informed and in which feedback is slow and infrequent, such as medical treatments or investment options.

 

His advice is for investment management companies and distributors to become "choice architects" - providing advice in a way that makes sense to the relevant client segment or age group and that solves the fundamental conundrum of choice: with too much choice investors get overwhelmed and fall into a state of inertia, too little choice leaves them bored.

 

Steve Jobs with his dislike of keyboards and manuals famously had the iPod created with only one button. One fund is not enough, but the increasing concentration of new flows to blockbuster products and managers highlights the importance of getting product design and advice right - or face extinction, like the komodo's former next of kin, the dinosaur.

 

About Daniel Enskat, Head of Global Consulting and Senior Managing Director, Strategic Insight

 

For almost a decade, Daniel has led the development of Strategic Insight's Global fund research and consulting effort, and is widely sought after for presentations, discussions, and his perspective on the global asset management industry by associations, academia, regulators, the media and management boards of the firm's over 250 clients worldwide. He has written extensively on the fund industry, including various books on Asia, the Middle East and Global Fund Distribution (www.globalfunddistribution.com/about-the-authors).

 

^1. Goldman Sachs, Global Economics Paper: 'Building Better Global Economic BRICs', November 2001.
^2. Schroder BRICs Equity Feeder, a local Korea fund launched in late 2005.
^3. CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets: CIO Notes, July 2009 - https://www.clsa.com/assets/files/reports/CLSA-chindonesia-cioNotes-20090804.pdf
^4. Investment Company Institute, Research Fundamentals: Characteristics of Mutual Fund Investors, 2008; http://www.ici.org/pdf/fm-v18n2.pdf
^5. The report was released on May 14, 2009 - a full version of the report is available at http://pewsocialtrends.org.

by Kevin Ng

 

On July 30, 2009, Strategic Insight (SI) announced its merger with Asset International (AI), adding to AI's suite of services for the financial services market: PLANSPONSOR, PLANADVISER, Global Custodian, aiTrade, and ai5000. I am excited about this new partnership and the opportunity to find new ways we can serve our clients by leveraging expertise from both AI and SI.

 

I've been at Strategic Insight for over six years now, during which time I have led growth in the Variable Annuities area.  We see even more potential for expanding our existing product suite and offering innovative new products and services for our clients in the retirement, retirement income, and sub-advisory areas. My own my career has included positions in various capacities at Putnam, Fidelity, and Coopers and Lybrand (now PwC). The connection with PLANSPONSOR brings me full circle to the retirement industry, since my role at Putnam was to support the defined contribution business. SI has terrific core strengths that we can leverage through this new partnership.

 

Founded in 1986, SI is a mutual fund research and consulting firm with a long history of expanding its services and research expertise. SI's visionary founder Joel Rosenthal wrote SI's first mutual fund industry trends report, "Mutual Funds: Investing in the Future," in that first year. Since then, SI has vastly broadened its research and services to a wide array of clients. SI went on to launch Simfund, the leading mutual fund, variable annuity, and global mutual fund net flow and research tool; introduced sionline.com, annuityinsight.com, and strategicinsightglobal.com, which house much of SI's research reports and valuable research tools and services for competitive analysis; and added a number of new products and services, including 15(c) fee analysis, regional forums, an ETF report, and distribution channel analysis with Coates Analytics.

 

The AI and SI merger brings about a new era for Strategic Insight and our clients. This growth-oriented collaboration between AI and SI will result in additive synergies. In particular, the combined organization will leverage the retirement area expertise of PLANSPONSOR and the mutual fund expertise of SI to create value-added, retirement-focused services for businesses that operate within the retirement space. We also see a valuable synergy between PLANSPONSOR and SI's variable annuity services, especially with growing interest in guaranteed retirement income within retirement plans. In addition to these organizational synergies, SI will have access to greater financial resources now that it is part of the Asset International, enabling us to accelerate the development of our database services and global expansion.

 

Expect more from the new and improved Strategic Insight.

 

About Kevin Ng

 

Kevin Ng is the Senior Managing Director of Retirement and Variable Annuity Research at Strategic Insight. Since 2003, Kevin has led growth in the VA area and oversaw the expansion of new and existing products for clients related to retirement income and sub-advisory services. Prior to Strategic Insight, Kevin was Vice President, Marketing Manager, at Putnam Investments, supporting their Defined Contribution business. Before Putnam, Kevin held positions in various capacities at Fidelity and Coopers and Lybrand (now PwC).