Successful Defined Contribution Investment Design

Acknowledgments

This volume was brought into being as a result of countless conversations about the increasing importance of defined contribution pension plan design for workers around the globe. My first volume, Designing Successful Target-Date Strategies for Defined Contribution Plans: Putting Participants on the Optimal Glide Path, was published in 2010 and focused on designing and implementing custom target-date strategies within DC plans. This volume, in turn, broadens and deepens the dialogue about plan design—looking not only at custom target-date strategies, but also the whole of DC investment design from governance to investment defaults, through the core lineup and ending with retirement income. My goal in preparing this book is to further contribute to plan sponsors’, consultants’, and other professionals’ understanding of how to design a DC plan to help participants succeed in building adequate and sustainable retirement income.

Like its predecessor, this book is the result of extensive collaboration and participation among a very long list of colleagues, plan sponsors, consultants, lawyers, and investment and other DC professionals. Among my colleagues, Ying Gao, PhD, CFA, CAIA is noted on the cover as she has worked tirelessly over the past six years in developing and enhancing the PIMCO DC analytic toolset, including the methodology for PRICE. We worked together in coauthoring a long list of DC design papers; analytic work from these papers is updated and woven ...