Russell Launches Retirement Planning and Investment Program
SEATTLE, WA, October 10, 2012 -- Global asset manager Russell Investments has launched the Russell Retirement Lifestyle Solution™, a planning and investment program designed to help build a portfolio specifically for retirement goals. Available only through financial advisors, the program features an adaptive investment model strategy that aims to maintain a suitable client's funded status above 100% in retirement. The three-pronged framework — easily leveraged and scalable for the advisor — targets the primary concerns of many of their clients, that is, consistent income (reliability), not running out of money (sustainability) and maintaining control of their assets (flexibility).
The new program is initially available through two established partners — Cambridge Investment Research and Lincoln Investment Planning — and some of Russell's largest clients in the Registered Investment Advisor channel.
"Advisors are preparing for a sea change in their practices. Clients need more from them — more time, more advice, more reassurance they are on track with their savings, and more personalized portfolios," said Sandy Cavanaugh, CEO for Russell's advisor-sold business. "Advisors know there isn't a magic bullet, but aren't completely satisfied with the retirement income options available to them currently. They want to be sure they have the right tools to meet clients' needs, while also managing their own practices efficiently and productively. Given this, we think advisors are going to find the Russell Retirement Lifestyle Solution to be a unique and valuable program that will help them navigate the retirement process, deliver a customized solution and provide ongoing support to their clients."
The Three-pronged Approach
The Retirement Lifestyle Solution™ consists of:
- Retirement Lifestyle Planner — A simple-to-navigate, five-step web-based planning tool designed to help advisors create a personalized and sustainable withdrawal plan for a client. The Retirement Lifestyle Planner puts the advisor at the center of the planning process, reinforcing their role in helping clients get through retirement, from analyzing investor information, assets, feasibility of spending goals, portfolio allocations and ultimately the individual plan.
- Retirement Income Model Strategy — Based on Russell's Adaptive Investing approach, this newly launched strategy is an extension of Russell's family of model strategies. It allows for a range of periodic withdrawals for retirees aged 60 to 85 and, because the model strategy is comprised of mutual funds, it allows clients to maintain the control and flexibility that's critically important to them at this stage in their lives.
- An advisor support program that gives distribution partners and advisors tools to implement the program and to have meaningful conversations with their clients. The support program includes how-to-use guides, sales materials, quarterly fact sheets and educational modules.
"Many of our independent advisors strive to provide their clients with financial plans and solutions that lead up to and through retirement, and this is important as clients consider how to plan their retirement spending and make their assets last," said Bobbi Martin, First VP, Marketing, at Cambridge Investment Research. "Russell's solution serves that effort well and provides advisors with a comprehensive support program to help them engage clients in meaningful, productive conversations on these vital questions."
In developing the Russell Retirement Lifestyle Solution, Russell leveraged proprietary research focused on advisors and their clients, in addition to leveraging its more than 40 years' experience applying strategic market insights, global money manager research and rigorous investment processes to create and implement multi-asset portfolios for some of the largest institutional investors.
"Investors need and want help managing their retirement assets. Our new offering and related resources aim to help advisors be more relevant, realistic and responsive to their clients," said Tim Noonan, director, Capital Markets Insights for Russell's advisor-sold business. "Reengaging investors around retirement planning is key in helping individuals avoid the scenario they fear most: running out of money before running out of life. The Russell Retirement Lifestyle Solution is an important element of Russell's efforts to help advisors reengage their clients."
Central to the planning process is Russell's Adaptive Investing approach to help manage the risk of an investor outliving their assets, which starts by evaluating whether the investor is sufficiently funded to meet their desired lifestyle in retirement. By measuring and managing the client's funded ratio (or ratio of assets to liabilities), an advisor can help answer their clients' three key questions: "How much can I spend? Will my money last? Am I on track?"
"Russell's adaptive investing approach is designed to better integrate an advisor's decision-making with investment management," said Phill Rogerson, managing director for consulting and product in Russell's advisor-sold business. "It combines an adaptive planning process with an investment strategy that is also designed to adapt as needed when considering many of the risks and uncertainties — like market volatility — that retirees encounter."
For more information, go to the "retirement income" area of www.russell.com.
About Russell Investments
Russell Investments (Russell) is a global asset manager and one of only a few firms that offer actively managed, multi-asset portfolios and services that include advice, investments and implementation. Working with institutional investors, financial advisors and individuals, Russell's core capabilities extend across capital markets insights, manager research, Indexes, portfolio implementation and portfolio construction.
Russell has about $152 billion in assets under management (as of 6/30/12) and works with 2,300 institutional clients, more than 500 independent distribution partners and advisors, and individual investors globally. As a consultant to some of the largest pools of capital in the world, Russell has $2.4 trillion in assets under advisement (as of 12/31/12). It has four decades of experience researching and selecting investment managers and meets annually with more than 3,000 managers around the world. Russell traded $1.5 trillion in 2011 through its implementation services business. The Russell Global Indexes calculate over 50,000 benchmarks daily covering 85 countries and more than 10,000 securities.
Russell is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, USA, and has offices in Amsterdam, Auckland, Beijing, Chicago, Dubai, Frankfurt, London, Melbourne, Milan, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo and Toronto. For more information about how Russell helps to improve financial security for people, visit www.russell.com or follow us @Russell_News.
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