Jacksonville, Fla., has overhauled the investment options lineup of its 401(a) and 457 plans in an effort to simplify and improve the lineup, as well as to reduce fees.
The plans, which have the same lineups, now have 12 investment options, down from a total of 87, plus a target-date fund series managed by BlackRock, said Joey Greive, city treasurer. The plans previously had five target-date funds managed by Great-West Financial. Great-West Retirement Services is the provider for the plans.The changes were due to city officials' wish to implement governance best practices, Mr. Greive said in an e-mail. Participants will be re-enrolled and their accounts will be mapped to the 12 new funds and/or the target-date fund lineup to “improve asset allocations,” Mr. Greive said.
Participants in the current Vanguard 500 Index Fund can remain with that investment option if they choose not to map to the BlackRock target-date fund lineup.
Fees also are being reduced to about 0.6% from 1% on an overall average, he said.
New managers that did not previously have any investment options in the plan are: Franklin Templeton Investments, Loomis Sayles, Principal Global Investors, Putnam Investments, and Touchstone Investments.
The 12 investment options themselves are all new to the plans and are:
- One domestic large-cap equity fund managed by Touchstone Investments;
- Two domestic midcap equity funds managed by ClearBridge Investments and Vanguard Group;
- Two domestic small-cap equity funds managed by J.P. Morgan Asset Management and Principal Global Investors;
- Two international equity funds managed by Capital Group and Oakmark;
- Two domestic fixed-income funds managed by Loomis Sayles and Putnam Investments;
- One global fixed-income fund managed by Franklin Templeton Investments;
- One balanced fund managed by T. Rowe Price; and
- One stable value fund managed by Great-West Financial.
The 401(a) plans and 457 plans have a total of $175 million in assets.
