Morningstar's 401K Retirement Manager^SM can provide personalized advice on:

What is Morningstar® Retirement Manager℠?

Morningstar Retirement Manager is a platform designed to provide your employees with a personalized retirement plan. With employees focused on today’s priorities, it can be hard for them to find the time and motivation to focus on planning their financial futures. Your employees can access Morningstar Retirement Manager as part of their company’s overall benefits package. Participants can log into Morningstar Retirement Manager online, so they can use it just about anywhere. It takes about five minutes to get started with setting up a plan—and that plan will be personalized to the participant’s unique situation.

How can Morningstar Retirement Manager help?

Morningstar Retirement Manager is designed to make it easier for your employees to prepare for retirement. It may also add a competitive edge to your benefits packages that many prospective employees value. Morningstar Retirement Manager can help you differentiate your retirement plan by extending your benefits offering beyond target-date funds and other, less-personalized options. Plus, you can apply the work you’ve already done: Our customized portfolios are built using the investments from your existing lineup.

How is Morningstar Retirement Manager different from a target-date fund?

When an investor chooses a target-date fund, they choose one fund out of a series that corresponds to their expected retirement date. The fund's portfolio has been built by a fund manager to apply broadly to all investors expecting to retire within a set time frame (i.e. 5 or 10 years.) Morningstar Retirement Manager builds personalized portfolios based on the financial information you, your plan provider, or employee provides and offers savings recommendations, retirement date recommendations and, through an optional add-on service, can provide advice for the employee during the in-retirement phase.

Is Morningstar Retirement Manager available as a qualified default investment alternative (QDIA) for plans?

Yes, Morningstar Retirement Manager is a QDIA option for plans, according to the definitions provided by the Pension Protection Act of 2006.

Does Morningstar Retirement Manager help me fulfill my fiduciary obligation to my employees?

Yes. Morningstar Investment Management acts as a 3(21) fiduciary to participants in the Morningstar Retirement Management advice service and a 3(38) fiduciary in our discretionary managed account service. Because we act in a fiduciary capacity to the participant, the managed account service can help you fulfill some of your fiduciary obligations to your participants.

How can I inform my participants about Morningstar Retirement Manager?

Participant education is extremely important to ensure participants engage and take advantage of the services provided to them. Ask your plan provider for educational materials to distribute, which provides information on how to use the platform, and where and how to set up their account. Circulate materials by hand, email, or by posting on your intranet. Your provider may also provide digital workshops for participants, which are 30-minute educational online presentations. If available, these digital workshops can help educate your participants on the service and allow them to ask questions during the Q&A section of the presentation.

How does Morningstar Investment Management determine my risk level?

Morningstar Investment Management works to balance investing for the long term with taking on the appropriate amount of risk today to help you reach your goals. It’s a healthy mix of art and science that emphasizes disciplined saving and investing rather than chasing market returns.

However, the cornerstone of our approach to risk is you. The more you tell us about yourself, the more tailored our advice can be. We take the information we receive about you into account, from your salary and desired retirement location to the other retirement income you report to us, when determining a risk level that’s appropriate for you. For example, if you have other accounts that are aggressively invested outside your plan account, we may invest your portfolio more conservatively to balance out your overall risk.

While no investment strategy can ensure a profit or protect against a loss, our approach to risk seeks to help you better withstand the market’s ups and downs.

Why does the value of my portfolio fluctuate?

The value of your retirement portfolio fluctuates because the underlying stocks, bonds, and other investments that comprise your portfolio continually change. These changes are due to market forces, or volatility in the market, which cause the value of your portfolio to shift. We account for this volatility when creating your strategy and work to maintain an appropriate equity allocation to help you weather various economic cycles. As a long-term investor we’re focused on your end goal, not distracted by the market’s ups and downs.

Why am I not seeing the returns I was expecting?

When it comes to investing, market fluctuations are a given and dips will unfortunately affect returns. Morningstar Investment Management takes a long-term, holistic and diversified approach to investing with the goal of helping you meet your retirement goals. Morningstar Retirement Manager applies our total wealth methodology, which is designed to account for a person’s total financial situation. This helps us ensure your portfolio has the appropriate amount of risk for you with the aim of helping your portfolio weather the market's ups and downs.

Note: Diversification and asset allocation are methods used to help manage risk. They do not ensure a profit or protect against a loss.

Will Morningstar Investment Management's advice be able to outperform other investment options?

Morningstar Investment Management can't guarantee performance, but we aim to make an impact with our professional, personalized investment strategies.

When it comes to planning for the future you want, you deserve a plan that reflects who you are and where you want to go. Are you a do-it-yourself investor that wonders if you’re on the right track? Or have you always relied on target-date funds but want something that considers more than just your age? No matter what reason you have for enrolling, we’ll create a plan based on your needs, not a generic benchmark.

What about Morningstar Retirement Manager? Why should I use it?

Morningstar Retirement Manager helps to take the guesswork out of saving for retirement. You’ll get personalized advice on how much to save for retirement, when to retire, and how to invest your other retirement income.

You can visit Morningstar Retirement Manager whenever you want to check in on your goals, update your information, or take a peek at any new recommendations.