The Investments Desk 3 stories this week · 32 total

Demand for private markets in DC plans has now been measured twice; the summer poll shows participants cannot identify the assets they say they want, which pushes the education job onto the target-date fund.

Growth is coming from lower fees and brokerage windows rather than expanded eligibility, while four in five employees never buy a fund.

Collective investment trusts won the default slot with no SEC registration, which puts the monitoring file, not the fee quote, at the center of the decision.

Three of five private asset classes cost retirement wealth in the CFA Institute's modeling, which is precisely the argument for putting them inside a glidepath rather than on a self-directed menu.

Invesco's survey finds 65% of participants want a private-markets sleeve in their target-date fund, but the 58% who accept the fee trade-off is the figure the shelf will actually turn on.

A small private allocation can pay off in a DC plan, but only two of the five asset classes modeled beat a plain stock-and-bond baseline, and that arithmetic has consequences for how sponsors should buy the category.

MFS's Jeri Savage says concentration has reopened the active-passive question in 401(k) lineups; the recordkeepers who build the defaults will settle it.

A 15% equity quarter restored $3.8 trillion to household retirement balances, and the only behavioral line ICI publishes says the money keeps leaving DC plans—though the arithmetic says most of the widening was mark to market.

The framework lets sponsors assemble a pension-style glide path inside the 401(k) default, shifting the contest from fund selection to who owns the construction.

The participation gap opens at enrollment and the balance gap peaks two decades later, leaving a single threshold as the plan-design decision sponsors have not made.

Six private markets CIT shelves have been announced in roughly five months, and Great Gray's split with iCapital shows which half the industry thinks is scarce.

Contribution data and the DOL alternatives proposal are pushing participant-level discretion from the a la carte side of the menu to the center of plan design.

Average balances hit $396,767, but Millennials still hold roughly a quarter of what boomers do.

The new trust answers the liquidity question with a dedicated sleeve; the size of that buffer and the $1 billion pipeline are the open tests.

Auto-enrollment pushed 61% of Vanguard participants into a single target-date fund; the harder problem is turning those balances into income.

Opened with more than $50 million and near-term commitments above $1 billion, the trust is the clearest test yet of private equity built for the daily-priced 401(k).

Four DC-bound private-credit vehicles in one week, from Ares, Shenkman, StepStone, and Jana, mark a shift from recordkeeper CITs to fund sponsors' own shelves.

The recordkeeper is targeting the 3 percent of DC assets in private markets by attaching its oversight and monitoring to target-date CITs.

Morningstar's new research finds the biggest contribution gaps in voluntary enrollment plans, suggesting managed accounts work best where plan design leaves the work to participants.

A review of 11-K filings shows active domestic equity funds accounted for a large share of 2025 lineup changes, with consultants blaming the category's persistent struggles in a fee-first market.

Plan sponsors should stress-test late-career glidepaths against 2022, when bonds fell with equities and the classic portfolio lost 16.64%.

The $19 billion deal adds ETF and managed-account capabilities to its retirement business.

Sway Research's mid-year report shows 11% first-half growth, with income-linked target-dates up 18%.

Foundations and endowments led with a 7.0% median return, but the S&P 500's 15.2% gain did the heavy lifting.

The self-directed IRA custodian is betting that operational friction, not client demand, has kept private-market deals out of retirement accounts.

New platform for RIAs bundles custody, processing and compliance into one workflow, betting that less friction moves more retirement dollars into private assets.

Two decades after the Pension Protection Act, collective investment trusts hold 55% of the $5.3 trillion target-date market, and income features have become the next battleground.

Advisers are on track to add $2 trillion in private assets while 401(k) sponsors remain stuck at 3 percent. The DOL benchmark rule is the unresolved variable.