New York-based Vestwell, a digital retirement plan recordkeeper, announced the launch of a service offering all-ETF target-date portfolios for the small plan market.
ETFVest, which Vestwell announced on Thursday, combines 3(38) investment management fiduciary lineup services from LeafHouse Financial, which already acts as a plan fiduciary for private and public retirement plans around the U.S., with an all-ETF target-date portfolio model from Stadion, which specializes in offering customized investment options to the retirement plan market, using Vestwell’s API-driven recordkeeping solution.
“The small plan market is fraught with inefficiencies, so we’re always looking for innovative strategies to more effectively service it in a tech-forward, cost-effective way,” says Ben Thomason, executive vice president of revenue at Vestwell, in released comments. “With no revenue sharing, intra-day trading, low-cost yet highly effective funds, all built into a modern-day solution, we’re excited to bring ETFVest to market alongside some of the industry’s best advisory and asset management complexes.”
Plan advisors will be able to access a multi-manager lineup using a custom glide path that includes ETFs from Franklin Templeton, State Street Global Advisors and Fidelity Investments.
The ETFVest service places Vestwell among the first recordkeepers to offer an ETF-only fund lineup for 401(k)s. The company says that using the ETFs’ intra-day trading characteristics might help it reduce time out of the market and many implicit trading costs.