SEI Issues Guidance on Planning and Managing Pensions

In a company press release, Jim Morris, Senior Vice President of SEI’s Retirement Solutions and author of the white paper, says, “Plan sponsors can no longer manage pensions outside of corporate finance. An ergonomic approach focuses on how pension finance can be aligned with all of the company’s strategies.   This paper outlines what SEI believes to be the future model for the optimization of pension plans.”

The five considerations of the white paper are:

• Promote Plan Predictability-Under the traditional model, plan sponsors are held captive by market fluctuations and inconsistent investment returns. CFOs realize that plan predictability is the only way to counter this volatility.
• Create Clear Accountability for Results- Instead of holding trustees accountable for all aspects of the plan, accountability would be shared.
• Manage Actively, Align Often- Change pension strategy as corporate strategy is changed based on market conditions.
• Get to a More Strategic Level-The traditional model endorses segmentation because it assigns specific expertise to a variety of vendors. As a result, pension plan managers are responsible for the coordination of every piece of the plan from investment management, compliance issues, plan administration, policy changes and strategic direction.   The new approach seeks a complete, end-to-end integrated management process, which eliminates unnecessary steps and redundancies.
• Measure With New Metrics- Rate of return can no longer be used to measure pension plan success. The new approach aligns pension metrics with corporate metrics to help achieve overall goals.

A copy of the white paper can be obtained by emailing  seiresearch@seic.com .