The New York State Deferred Compensation Plan will look at stable value structure managers as it gets the responses from a recently issued request for proposals. Julian Regan, executive director, said the manager will assist the plan in allocating $3.2 billion in stable value assets. The stable value money is currently divided among several funds and managed by the plan, assisted by its retainer consultant, Evaluation Associates. The new structure will have a stable value manager assist the plan in overseeing the same set of funds, usually guaranteed investment contracts or synthetic GICs with varying maturity dates. Evaluation Associates will continue to assist.
Regan said the plan decided to go ahead with the RFP because another consultant, Callan Associates, which was hired to do an overall evaluation of the plan’s investment options, recommended it as a way to maximize the amount of expertise, and with it the returns. Regan added that such structure managers are becoming more popular in the corporate world with very large plans. Mostly this has to do with their sheer size. “When you allocate $200 million you get terrific pricing,” he said. Callan is also the consultant that helped write the RFP, responses to which are due Feb. 21. Regan declined to say what firms had responded so far.